Graham Gentz is a modern-day Renaissance man in the vein of the Shakespearean characters he portrays. Gentz, a junior majoring in creative writing and astrophysics, is an aspiring scientist, actor, screenwriter and director. He’s one of the actors in the Summer Shakespeare Festival. Also, he likes climbing trees.
DL: So let’s talk about this play you’re going to be in. I have been told it’s a modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew,” right? From what I have heard that means some modern allusions like the “D*** in a Box” SNL viral video a while back.
GG: I don’t want to give too much away, but, yes, in the text anyway there are a lot of d*** jokes. It’s a surprisingly funny play. It’s nothing but innuendo and sick jokes, some of which are really shockingly graphic. There is a “D*** in a Box” joke in there.
DL: Not in the original though, right?
GG: It’s original. What has been changed is … The power anyone has when they direct Shakespeare is all words. There’s 1 percent stage direction. It wasn’t written the way plays are written now. One of my beefs with people studying Shakespeare in school — it’s great that Shakespeare’s being exposed — you don’t really get it just reading it for a class. It wasn’t written to be read. When Shakespeare wrote his plays, he wrote them on a bunch of different scripts and handed them out to the actors. Shakespeare, at the very least, is meant to be spoken aloud or heard or performed. You don’t really get it if you’re just reading it.
DL: So what you’re saying is that with a modern interpretation you can change how it’s spoken or performed?
GG: All Shakespeare, the way it’s written, is so dense and so complex and levels of innuendo and things archaically lost, so there are a lot of things that don’t make sense. Things like “Much Ado About Nothing.” In Elizabethan England one of the common slang words for youfr dick was your, “thing,” and so thus being … the opposite of a d***, a vagina, was a “no thing” because they didn’t have a thing. So it’s, “Much Ado About No Thing,” so it’s, “Much Ado About P****,” is what the play means.
DL: How did you come by that double major?
GG: In high school, I really wanted to study physics, but along the way I did some internships with Sandia Labs. There were other creative interests. I’ve done theater, and I started writing plays after a while. So I started off as a creative writing major, but I think I needed physics in my life. Instead of choosing, which was difficult, I just decided to double major.
DL: Has that had any interesting ramifications? I think people tend to see the sciences and creative arts separate of one another, so what’s that been like for you?
GG: Theater is … I like acting, but eventually at some point in high school, I started writing and directing plays, which taught me to be a better actor. And acting taught me how to write and direct better. I got my film certificate over at CNM, too. That’s all part of the same thing too. Usually, when I tell people I am double majoring in physics and creative writing they’re like, “Oh you’re going to write books about rockets.” That’s not at all what it is about for me. Writing, being the creative part, can teach me the most about things that I like: film, theatre, acting. Being a better writer will make be better at everything.
DL: So you said at some point you said you needed physics in your life. Could you explain that more?
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GG: At some point in grade school, there was a magical moment where it clicked for me. The teacher started going on this tangent. It was sixth grade or something, and he started talking about the grand unified field theory, which was the Holy Grail of physics. It blew my mind. I knew it was something very important. Nothing really excited me the way that did. I mean I liked reading. I liked film. Physics was something really, really special. I felt like I really needed to stick to that, even though for the past four years, I‘ve been doing mostly the creative thing.
DL: So it’s all been going along well, then?
GG: Yeah it is. I am only starting to do heavy math again, which use to be a huge part of my life. The novelty is back and it’s exciting. It’s great.
