![]() ![]() ![]() Instead, working closely with Robison-a partner in developing and staging several of her plays, including the much-produced Native Gardens (2016), commissioned by Cincinnati Playhouse-she crafted an adaptation of Shane that she feels faithfully reflects the actual American West, which is “very different than what was always depicted in films. (Photo by Mikki Schaffner)įor years, Zacarías’s memory of Schaefer’s novel remained vivid, and in fact she didn’t see George Stevens’s classic film before writing her adaptation. ![]() ![]() “And the sensitive and mysterious Shane, described as a lean, dark figure…lived in my imagination as my hero Roberto Clemente, the Afro-Latino baseball legend who had died trying to fly supplies to Nicaragua earthquake survivors.”Ĭhristopher Wells, Tommy Thams, and Mikell Sapp in “Shane” at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. “The mother was called Marian, a common Latin American name, and I imagined her as such,” Zacarías wrote in a program note. She identified with the novel’s fictional family, as they too had moved to a new place in search of a safer, more prosperous future, and pictured the characters accordingly. Not so in Zacarías’s Shane, which is based on her own memory of Jack Schaefer’s 1949 novel, which she read when she was 11, not long after her family moved from Mexico to Boston. One departure from typical Westerns, including the classic 1953 movie Shane with Alan Ladd: In such films almost all of the characters were white, and Native Americans and Mexicans, if present at all, were cast as villains. Zacarías collaborated with Robison to develop her take on the tale about a war between ranchers and homesteaders in 1889 Wyoming. 27) at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, which co-commissioned the piece. Next he’s taking the production for a four-week run (July 21-Aug. But that’s not at all what playwright Karen Zacarías brought to the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park in June 2023, when producing artistic director Blake Robison staged the world premiere of her adaptation of Shane. A stage adaptation of a classic Western film might sound kind of retro. ![]()
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