He's not Shakespeare
Bukovec is the Bard's best friend on a midsummer's night
BY TOM CHESEK
Correspondent

PHOTOSBYCHRISKELLY staff John Bukovec, the director who heads the Brookdale Community College Summer Shakespeare Ensemble, watches over the rehearsal of "The Tempest" July 8.

Like Richard III and other vivid characters from the pen of William Shakespeare, John Bukovec has a well-laid plan, and he's not at all shy in telling us about it.

For the past six years, the head of the Brookdale Community College drama department has spent his summer vacation as producer, director and driving force behind the BCC Summer Shakespeare Ensemble, a troupe dedicated to bringing Monmouth County audiences the best of the Bard, free of charge, beneath the sun, moon and stars.

Having presented such Elizabethan frolics as "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" in local parks and public places, the seasoned Shakespearean actor/

director makes no secret of his desire to amp it up a notch, by taking on the master's intensely wrought tragedies and historical dramas.

Bob Grill rehearses his role as Prospero in "The Tempest."

As they have each July since 2002, the beach towels, blankets and coolers of the faithful will be in bloom on the college's Great Lawn in the Lincroft section of Middletown. But the transition to heavier, more challenging fare begins here as well, with Bukovec's outdoor staging of "The Tempest," Shakespeare's last work and a play which, while ostensibly a comedy, remains a surreal study of revenge that has defied easy categorization for nearly 400 years.

Actually completed after the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, "The Tempest" strands a storm-tossed shipload of voyagers (including Antonio, the Duke of Milan) within a strange island realm inhabited by a collection of magical beings, and lorded over by Antonio's brother, Prospero, a self-taught sorcerer of formidable power, and himself the exiled claimant to Antonio's title.

While the deposed duke plays head games with his reluctant guests and plots vengeance upon his brother, a parallel scheme is also hatched against Prospero, and, like some medieval medley of "Lost" and "Survivor," nearly everyone on the island pursues an agenda of deceit and mischievous treachery.

This 2007 offering will present all eight of its performances on the school's campus (near Larrison Hall), and for the first time in several years, will not be playing at such off-campus venues as Red Bank's Riverside Gardens or Freehold's Michael J. Tighe Park.

Also new this year is an all-weather policy, which in the event of rain ensures that the show will go on, indoors at the nearby BCC Performing Arts Center.

"With the off-campus shows, I had to direct essentially three versions of the same play," Bukovec explains in reference to the different layouts of the various venues.

As the director tells it, "Wedding parties would show up and attempt to take photos against our scenery, people would cut across our stage area. I'm willing to overlook some things, but a guy riding a bike through my set? C'mon!"

Still, given the many circumstances beyond the producer's control (including sudden storms not unlike that summoned up by Prospero at the start of the play), the summer shows have much in common with live theater as practiced in Shakespeare's day. Even a modern concession like equipping the actors with mics is done in a way that fulfills the director's goal of "keeping the intimacy while trying to maintain the volume."

Ultimately, Bukovec emphasizes, "I'm not Shakespeare, and I don't try to second-guess Shakespeare. I try to keep it as true to [the text] as possible."

"I've acted in enough of these things," said the man who has performed in "Macbeth" outdoors in the middle of July in fur boots and a fur kilt, "and I've been subjected to directors who 'have a vision' without having thought it all the way through."

There's no denying that Bukovec's own reverent personal stamp has been the engine driving this successful series, for which the director has been joined by dramaturge Flo Shields and stage manager Judy Alexander since its inception six years ago.

As for the nuts and bolts of communicating Shakespeare's period language to contemporary crowds, the director maintains, "Until you understand what you're saying, it's not gonna work. Nobody is translating that 400-year-old English; the translation comes in by acting it.

"The best comment is when someone tells me that they really understand the material."

One concern of Bukovec's is the fact that "by this point we've done all the well-dispersed shows in terms of the number of lines that the actors have to memorize. Prospero has over 600 lines here, so you have to know people who can do it, who are really into it."

Now in his third year with the ensemble, Bob Grill of Cranbury stars as Prospero, having worked his way up through the ranks with supporting roles in such offerings as last year's "Merry Wives."

"Prospero has the ulterior motive of revenge: he brings the other characters to the island, keeps them alive but separated," Bukovec explains. "He's a pompous guy who plays God, but by the end his revenge has been tempered into a more kingly, honorable thing."

Also of interest here is the director's interpretation of the slave Caliban (played by Ruben Nagy of Red Bank), a character often portrayed as a furry, fanged man-beast.

In Bukovec's view, "Caliban's not a physical monster, but a mental monster; he's a browbeaten slave who's been kept in subhuman conditions, but I don't necessarily see him as a monster."

Also featured in the cast of 17 actors (a few of whom double up on the smaller parts) are Julianna Stanford of Montclair as Prospero's daughter, Miranda; Eric Pertgen of Wall as Ferdinand, son to the King of Naples; Jason Piskiel of New Brunswick as Antonio, and Sam Giustiniani of Highlands as the tricky spirit Ariel. Justin Friedman of Manalapan and Lindsay Attalla of Howell bring the comic relief as, respectively, the jester Trinculo and drunkard Stephano (remember, it's a comedy).

For the future, the director plans to continue his explorations of the Bard's darker-themed shows, conceding, "I'd love to do 'Richard III' or 'Othello' here, but I'm not sure when to pull the trigger. I don't think that Hamlet is ready to sit out on the lawn for four hours."

"The Tempest"

by William Shakespeare

Thursdays through Saturdays

(July 12-21) at 7 p.m.,

and Sundays

(July 15 and 22) at 5 p.m.

On the lawn near Larrison Hall Brookdale Community College Newman Springs Road

Lincroft

Admission is free

(732) 224-2411