This week, justArts spoke with Arielle Keller ’16, the director of The Merchant of Venice, a show produced by Hold Thy Peace as part of ’DEIS Impact.

justArts: Tell me why you chose to produce The Merchant of Venice for ’DEIS Impact.

Arielle Keller: I’ve always been really fascinated with the show itself. And the first time that I saw it, I was actually really horrified and shocked and I didn’t like it. But I came to realize that it’s really important to show these different kinds of awful things that people can do because we can learn from it. So the reason for ’DEIS Impact is that we realized, during the course of the show, that the play itself includes racism, sexism, homophobia and anti-Semitism. And we think that it’s really important to bring these social justice topics to [the] table and use theater for a bunch of different means, so like, using theater as an expression—you know, a way to talk about it—as well as bringing questions of the audience and bringing it to [the] modern day and pointing out that it has been true since 17th century Italy. We still haven’t totally recovered from those terrible things that we’ve done.

JA: Can you tell me about some of the themes that you’re looking at in terms of social justice?

AK: There’s the anti-Semitism part, which is Shylock—the main character of the play, or one of the main characters of the play. He is a Jew and he’s the subject of kind of a lot of anti-Semitism. But he’s also portrayed kind of as a villain. He does some really terrible things. So there’s that conflict. … We play the character of Antonio as gay and in love with Bassanio, which is not done in every production. But, you know, that’s our interpretation.

And we think that’s really important, also, to show that basically everyone in the show stomps on everyone else. ... Basically nobody is free from being blamed in this show. Everyone’s got good and bad in them.

JA: Can you tell me about the creative liberties you took in the production?

AK: There’s an opening and closing sequence of the show that isn’t part of the script. And it’s a little more abstract, so that’s kind of a creative liberty we took. It basically involves different characters having these silent moments while there’s music playing in the room. And [giving] these silent looks [to] each other and [interacting] at a more raw level. So those usually involve the people who are subject to these different injustices. …

At the end of the play, we have characters representing the four injustices I described—so sexism, racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia. And they come out and they’re looking at each other. And then at the end of the end of the show, they look up at the eyes of the figure of justice who’s an imposing force throughout the whole play and is just staring down at the audience, almost, blindfolded. And then her eyes glow red and it just sort of leaves the audience with this feeling that justice is not blind. That’s what we were going for.

JA: Tell me about your biggest challenge in directing.

AK: I think one of the challenges was learning to let go of the exact vision that was in my head—the exact picture that I was looking for. And I found that when I let go of the reins a little bit, the people who were part of the production just brought so much more to it and it was just so much better than I could have imagined. The people did some amazing things. They’re all very deep thinkers. The cast is just full of people that really, really care about the parts and think deeply about them. And they brought so much to the table that I really couldn’t have brought to them. They did a great job.

JA: What is your favorite part about the show?

AK: My favorite moments have been the ones where the characters interact with the audience because it just draws us right in when we’re watching it and there’s a lot more of that than I was originally expecting there to be or planning for. … But when I was sitting in the audience, I felt that the amount that I felt drawn in by the characters that interacted specifically with the audience was just awesome. They did a great job.