What can we learn from our enemies? As the Dalai Lama said, “our enemies can be our greatest teachers.”
Patrick Page
Actor Patrick Page understands this well. In his new show, All The Devils Are Here, which he created and performs in, Page shines a light on the human sides of motivation of Shakespeare’s greatest villains. That includes King Richard III, Malvolio, Claudius, Iago, Lady MacBeth and more. The result is a funny, fascinating and thought-provoking play that offers a deep dive into what drives us to the dark side.
“I’ve always been fascinated with antisocial behavior,” says Page who is performing his play at the DR2 Theatre through March 31. “I believe we, as a species, are fascinated with it. All you have to do is turn on Dateline, HBO or Netflix and you’ll see documentaries, series and movies based around the problem that people do destructive things to one another, sometimes purposely.”
Throughout All The Devils Are Here Page mines Shakespeare’s plays chronologically. He delves into the playwright’s relationship with these dark characters offering illuminating insight.
“In exploring these villains chronologically, you can really see and experience how Shakespeare became Shakespeare. Over the course of two decades, he kept looking at human beings more and more closely, specifically with deeper curiosity and more compassion,” says Page.
“With each of these characters by setting himself the hardest possible problem, which is why do people do terrible things to one another? He comes closer and closer to what it means to be human.”
Shakespeare has always played a key role in Page’s life. When he was a small child his father was an actor with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Bard has been embedded in his DNA ever since.
“I saw my father and the other actors on stage and was just enraptured,” says Page who veteran of dozens of Broadway and off-Broadway shows, including Hadestown for which Page was nominated for a Tony and won a Grammy playing King Hades. “When I got older and began to study Shakespeare in college, I realized that this was just something I could spend my life exploring if I could gain the skills to be able to share this with people.”
With every performance of All the Devils Are Here Page does a Q&A with the audience after the play inviting them to ask whatever they wish. In fact, the audience is so vital he refers to the play as not just a solo show, but a 101 person production where he uses the 100 people in the audience as his scene partners.
“It’s really kind of a two act experience,” says Page who also has a thriving film and TV career with a recurring role as loyal secretary Richard Clay in the Gilded Age. “The first act is me performing the show. And the second act is a conversation with the audience. And it’s in that conversation that I learn so much about their curiosity.”
After seeing All The Devils Are Here Page hopes that the audience will come away feeling a sense of confidence that Shakespeare is for them. “If you see a Shakespeare play and don’t understand what is going on and it’s not very thrilling, it’s not your fault,” he insists. “It’’s the actor’s and director’s fault and that can be for a whole host of reasons. Because if the play is executed very well, it will grab you.”
The other thing he hopes people come away with is a sense of curiosity about their own darkness. “We don’t know ourselves. We think we do but don’t at all. Not even fractionally,” says Page. “Shakespeare knew that about himself and us. He knew that we were capable of terrors when put under certain conditions and pressures. And it’s only by knowing that about yourself that you can prevent it from happening.”
In fact Page points to the Carl Jung quote to prove his point: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
Patrick Page
