Riverside is pleased to announce our 2024 Champion of the Arts, Professor Miriam Gilbert!
A professor emerita of the University of Iowa and an esteemed Shakespeare scholar, Miriam has profoundly impacted our community through her dedication to high-quality performances, plays from classics to new works, and especially her passion for Shakespeare’s canon. On Sunday, November 3rd, an invited group of guests gathered to celebrate Miriam and her remarkable contributions to the arts.
We invite you to read our interview with Professor Gilbert, conducted by Riverside Theatre’s 2024 Marketing Intern, Josephine Geiger-Lee, to learn more about her inspiring journey and enduring influence on our arts community!
JGL: Thank you for taking the time to chat today! To begin, what has been your journey with the arts? At what point did you realize you wanted this to be your career?
PROFESSOR GILBERT: I suppose we go all the way back to when I was a little girl and my father was in amateur theatre in Alabama, which is where I grew up and I was allowed to cue him through the parts he was learning. There was the stipulation that if I came to the performance, I wasn’t allowed to say his lines with him—so I was a smarty-pants even then, what can I say?
The turning point really is the year 1961-1962. I graduated from high school in ‘61 and we then spent the next year in Manchester, England. I went to the University of Manchester as a freshman. I immediately got recruited into the drama group there and started working with them, and that just did it. The theater scene in England has always been brilliant but to have that right there and then to be part of it, even just on the university level—I never recovered, as I often say.
I think a lot of what I’ve done since then –theater, Shakespeare, a house in Stratford-upon-Avon – all goes back to that year in Manchester. My very first semester at the University of Iowa, I learned the effectiveness of using acting performances in an English course to get students to understand that plays are theatrical, as well as literary, works. Everybody who’s ever had a Shakespeare class with me has had to get up and perform. There’s no out. You can’t say “I’m too scared to do it.”
JGL: Zooming in on Riverside, how have you seen Riverside evolve, considering you’ve been with them for such a long time?
PROFESSOR GILBERT: I go back to the Old Brick days, and from the beginning, there was always an interest in doing new plays that still exists, and that I think is really important, and especially important in a city like Iowa City, where we value writers so much, whether we’re talking Playwrights Workshop, or Nonfiction Writing, or of course the Writer’s Workshop.
I think that what we’ve seen is that growth. The fact we were able, in the middle of the pandemic, to raise over a million dollars to redo the building where Riverside now exists says something about what Ron and Jody dreamt of, what Adam and his team has done, and—I want to bring Sean Christopher Lewis in here, who was the director for two years, because Sean came up with the idea of Free Shakespeare. Riverside has, more and more, shown how it is important to the community and how it contributes. One of the things that I really am so impressed by is the Riverside Playmaker Project, with the kids.
And I just think with everything downtown—with FilmScene and the Chauncey and Riverside and everybody being down there together—I am just… I’m just very proud of it. I still remember we were doing the opening, and the mayor was there, and Megan Gogerty said “This is a miracle.”
JGL: Thinking about Riverside and Shakespeare, what makes their Shakespeare special?
PROFESSOR GILBERT: I was so thrilled when Riverside decided to build the Shakespeare Festival Stage and was able to work with the City to build it… the kind of support that’s there is great! I was just absolutely delighted, and delighted that it’s kept on. And then when they decided to go to free Shakespeare…I was stunned. I’m really, really thrilled with the whole notion of free Shakespeare. I think that is a way to say to audiences: come, be comfortable, bring your kids, bring your picnic…I’m just delighted.
I’m also very, very delighted that–as much as possible–I teach the play that’s going to be done in the summer in Senior College. It is so much fun to talk to grown-ups about Shakespeare. I mean, it really is, and I can take that back to Riverside. I think the talkbacks are part of that same thing.
JGL: A lot of people know you through Senior College and Riverside’s Talkbacks. How do you approach each talkback—in coming up with your questions and your process?
PROFESSOR GILBERT: The thing is that—with a talkback as Riverside has developed—you want to draw on the experience of the actors and the director as much as possible. What can they say in addition to what we’ve already seen?
This is always a good question: What did you find particularly challenging? Where did you, or do you, have trouble with this? I like to ask that question, not because I want to make people uncomfortable, but because I think that if you can pinpoint where you are having difficulties and how you tried to solve them, you are opening up your thinking process for those of us listening, which is what we’re after.
It’s similar for the director. What was the most difficult moment for you in this play? What problems were you solving? Or the other question that always works: What really appealed to you about this play? Why did you want to do this play, for directors, or, for actors, what is it about this character that you really enjoy doing? So you go for the high points, and they’re all versions of that question.
You want to honor the individual, and you want that individual to connect the larger audience out there with the performance we’ve just seen. I see what the performance has been—the finished product. The talkback lets us go backstage to the rehearsal process…in the end we get a more complete picture of the whole performance.
JGL: What have been some of your favorite performances you’ve seen at Riverside?
PROFESSOR GILBERT: Oh, golly, golly. I remember when they did Wit and The Price, and when Tim Budd did the one-man show Every Brilliant Thing, I was keen on that one. It’s hard to remember all the goodies.
I loved A Walk in the Woods and The Trip to Bountiful, — that was just a season ago. It was a play I should have known and didn’t, and it also had Jody back on stage — it was the simplicity of the play.
People I’ve seen all the time, and then people I’ve never seen before, they’re part of my favorite performances. I love the fact that Adam is always looking out for actors. He likes to work with actors that are here but he’s also auditioning actors from other places, so that’s special, just seeing the variety and how many good people we’ve got around town.
When it comes to Riverside, it’s the experience and it’s the way in which Riverside both gives me something that I know and still surprises me.