Episode 397: Zombies and Shakespeare (with Melody Bates)
/Was Shakespeare writing about zombies? What if Romeo & Juliet were transformed at the end of the play rather than just dying? We’re joined by playwright and creator Melody Bates to talk about her love and frustration with Shakespeare, her acting origins, and translating fashion and folklore into performance.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of blood, gore, misogyny, death, suicide, disease, and violence.
Guest
Melody Bates (she/they) is a native Oregonian actor and writer based in Red Hook, Brooklyn. She is a queer femme creatrix whose award-winning work includes the plays R & J & Z and AVALON, and the Enchanted Islands Project. She is a versatile and talented actor who works in stage and film in a wide array of genres. Find out more about her work at https://www.melodybates.com
Housekeeping
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia. And we are joined here today by actor, writer, I want to say queer icon, queer creatrix, Melody Bates, welcome. We're so excited to have you here.
MELODY: I am delighted to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
AMANDA: And shout out Spirits listener, Kate, who both four years ago and last month was like, "You— you gotta check— you gotta check out Melody. You gotta chat with Melody. And you know what, Kate? You were right.
MELODY: Kate is almost always right. I want to say.
JULIA: Well, Melody, for people who aren't Kate and maybe aren't familiar with your work, can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
MELODY: I am an actor, a writer, a maker in a lot of different forms. I'm a— an omnivore, I would say as an artist.
JULIA: Ooh.
MELODY: The work of mine that Kate was really excited about is my play R & J & Z, which is a supernatural sequel to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It begins with Act Five of Shakespeare's play and continues in verse as the dead come back to life. Again, as— as an artist, I grew up on Sesame Street, and that is the sort of high and low at the same time, right? Like, there's really goofy, easy access stuff for kids, and then there's also, seeded in there, Easter egg jokes for people with a little bit more advanced intelligence. And I love to make work that does that. I love to be in work that does that. And I'm a big nerd. So always the things that I'm seeding in there— you know, people who aren't super nerdy can still have a good time, but people who are super nerdy, hopefully, they're getting something extra.
JULIA: Yes. I— I'm so glad we get to talk to you about those, because I believe that the— the 10th anniversary of R & J & Z is coming up soon.
MELODY: Absolutely. Yeah, it was 2014 in July that the world premiere happened.
JULIA: Wow.
MELODY: The creation of this— of this play, which I've been a writer all my life, but I was sort of in the closet about being a writer for a long time. My dad was a— was a brilliant writer and was always very supportive. And I was always, like, in my notebooks and in my computer files, but not so much public. And then this wonderful theater up in Maine where I had my— my first, like, professional acting gig playing Olivia and Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night.
AMANDA: What a great double casting.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: I mean, very, very, very excellent. And it was like my first pro acting gig right out of acting school, and it's on this magical island called Deer Isle, really beautiful, special place. And I started a long relationship with the theater and its founders, which culminated in a way with them supporting the writing of— of R & J & Z. It was such a big experiment. You know, I'd been writing all my life and I— I felt— I liked my writing but like I— I hadn't had a major work produced in this way. A play is a big, big investment and production, and so it was a— they took a really— a risk that I'm really grateful for. And also completely unproven to embark on this sequel idea. It paid off so beautifully, so thrillingly. And we had such an exciting time with it. And I will say, like, both the world premiere, which happened in Maine and the New York City premiere which happened the following year, there was this, like, crazy pressure cooker moment that I've— I've never experienced before, because I've been doing Shakespeare a long time, but like everybody knows the plays. And with this, like, you begin with text that's somewhat familiar to people, and— and people know, we're like only 10 minutes into the show as we— as we get towards that, you know, "A glooming peace this morning with it brings," that final speech of— of Shakespeare's text, and like people had zero idea what was going to happen.
AMANDA: That's so electric, 'cause Romeo and Juliet, especially, has got to be the most widely recognized Shakespeare play—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —and a plot that everybody's familiar with, of, "Oh, yeah, like blah, blah, blah, fall in love, they all die. Great."
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And I think when sitting down, it must be an incredible electric sense of possibility. As people, you know, to your point, 10, 15 minutes in, think like, "What on earth is going to happen next?"
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
MELODY: Yeah. It was a thrilling opportunity to reckon with some of the, like, unanswered questions of Shakespeare's play. I love a good joke. I love a lot of gore. But I'm also very earnest about my love for the offer that Shakespeare made in that story. And I also come to my writing from a worldview in which we're all whole people, you know? Like, often playing Shakespeare as a femme person, you get some really fully realized femme characters, and then some people who like— like Rosalind talks 100 miles a minute for four acts. And then suddenly, she just is silent for, like, the last three pages. Like, what happened? What— what happened?
AMANDA: We know she has an opinion.
JULIA: Girl, keep talking.
MELODY: One thing that I was motivated to do in writing R & J & Z was to turn the tables a little bit. And so there's a scene, for example, deep into my play, where there are two female characters who have a fight. And there's a male character in there who just has no text.
JULIA: He's just standing there. He's just like, "Okay.'
MELODY: Just has to stand there, and like—
AMANDA: Hmm.
MELODY: —I have had to solve that problem so many times as an actor.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: Like, I have to have a reason to be here. I'm in the script. I'm still supposed to be here, but the playwright gave me no words. So I was like, "So I know how to do that." And it was a— a hilarious process in our in our rehearsals, because the brilliant, wonderful actor who was playing this role, the male role, spoiler, it's Mercutio.
JULIA: Ooh.
MELODY: Was like, "I just feel like I'd say something."
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Yeah, man. So do I, every time I'm on stage, but I'm silent.
MELODY: Yeah. Do you feel that way?
AMANDA: It must be weird.
JULIA: No, but that's like, the thing too, is like I— Amanda and I did Shakespeare in high school, and Amanda studied a lot of Shakespeare when she got to the college level. And so there is so much of Shakespeare that is like, "And then that person kind of just stands there in the corner until it's their time to speak five pages later." And, like, it's such a kind of like, unfortunately, like misogynistic thing when doing Shakespeare, especially as like a woman or a femme actor, where you're like, "Okay, I guess I just have to kind of react without saying anything over here."
MELODY: Yeah. And like— and, you know, not a terrible challenge.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: But where it gets tricky is that it's always happening to the same group of people—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: —in Shakespeare's writing, right? Like, for all of his incredible humanism, like, if you're not a straight white man, I mean, you are way more likely to find yourself in that situation, and that's the problem.
JULIA: Yeah,
melody: But I'd also love to talk about an incredible opportunity that Shakespeare offered me.
JULIA: Ooh.
MELODY: I feel like it's worth telling the origin story of R & J & Z.
AMANDA: Please.
JULIA: Please do. Can I start by asking, what is your origin story with Shakespeare? Like, when did you start getting into Shakespeare? When did you start acting in Shakespeare, and kind of what made you fall in love with it, but also have criticisms of it?
MELODY: I grew up moving around a lot. My dad being a writer, we moved around following different like magazine and newspaper jobs. But mostly, a lot of my growing up, I did in the state of Oregon, which is where I was born. And Oregon has this incredible year-round Shakespeare Festival in the town of Ashland. And my parents took me and my brothers to see The Taming of the Shrew at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival when I was like nine or 10. I was little.
JULIA: What a first wild Shakespeare show to go see.
MELODY: 100, yes. And I don't— I have very little memory of the actual play, the performance, the plot, but I have a feeling memory. Oregon Shakespeare has this gorgeous outdoor, like, 1,200 seat, Elizabethan Theatre, that's like the globe. Open to the sky.
AMANDA: Wow. I have a feeling and visual memory of being in— in my seat, like rough sense of where I was in the— in the audience and the sky turning kind of purple twilight above us, and the stage just on fire, like a ruby, like a jewel. And I felt so simultaneously at home and in that space of I have no idea what's going to happen next. And I'm so thrilled. I'm like— like the thrill, I'm always seeking that incredible electric space to use your word, Amanda. Like, in my own work, in what I make as an actor, as a writer, as a creator, and when I'm in the audience. Like, that's what I want. I want it.
JULIA: I love that. I love that. And so from there, it was just seeking out that kind of thrill both as being an actor as well as seeking it out as an audience member?
MELODY: Yeah. And I— you know, not long after that, my grandparents had a coldwater cabin on Odell Lake in the high Oregon cascades and we would go there in the summer, every year at some point. And I also had inherited or our family had a— like child's— old child's encyclopedia called the children's Book of Knowledge that was like my—
AMANDA: Oh.
MELODY: —my mom and— and her siblings had growing up, and then our family had it. And the Book of Knowledge had versions of Shakespeare's plays that were like adapted for kids. So there was like, story, story, story, a little bit of the actual text, and then story, story. And I, like, started devouring them. And they had one of those— one of the plays that was in there was A Midsummer Night's Dream, and I was like, "I think next year when we go to the cabin, we should do A Midsummer Night's Dream." And like no one— no one told me no.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
MELODY: And so we did it. So we did it with, like, you know, grandma's Dress Up Box costumes and, like, on the— in the woods, on the shores of the lake.
AMANDA: That's so cute.
JULIA: That's so cute.
MELODY: Yeah.
AMANDA: Magical. And talks about a wonderful play to choose for like a— a summer twilight, you know, camp on the lake. Like, textually and vibe-wise, you can't get better.
JULIA: That really, like, explains a lot about what I know about your work now and now, I'm like, "Yeah, that makes sense. That checks out." I love that.
AMANDA: Tell me about the origins of R & J & Z because if we haven't said it yet on the show, the Z stands for—
MELODY: Well, somewhat open to interpretation.
JULIA: Oh.
MELODY: But zombies, like let's be real. Or, you know, that— the— the unknown coefficient from your— from your algebra.
AMANDA: Ooh. For all the algebra Shakespeare combo girls out there. I love that.
MELODY: Yeah. You know, like— okay. Origins, one of my survival gigs is acting and sometimes dancing in operas at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
AMANDA: Not too shabby, Mel. Not too shabby.
MELODY: Thanks, loves. I sometimes get comps when they're, like, trying to fill seats because I work there. And I got comps to the old production of Romeo and Juliet, the— the opera version of it.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: And I went with my partner and we— I mean, it's beautiful, opera— and the opera is magnificent and ridiculous, kind of an equal measure. In the opera version, they're in the tomb at the end. He, you know, drinks this poison and dies. She wakes up, tries to drink the poison, stabs herself, collapses, and then they both get up, and sing this, like, beautiful aria together. Because opera, I guess, you know, like there— there's no like real attempt to explain it away. But walking home on the corner of 63rd and Broadway, I was, like, saying, "I mean, what are they supposed to be? Undead?"
JULIA: Hmm.
MELODY: And I actually stopped in my tracks, like in the body, it happened.
JULIA: Hmm.
MELODY: And I was like, "Oh. Oh, I have to write a play called Romeo and Juliet and Zombies."
AMANDA: Incredible.
MELODY: From the explosion in my brain of that idea, I went back the following day and I reread Romeo and Juliet, and I'd like— you know, I— I know that play really well. As you say, like we all read it in high school. I played Juliet, like I knew it, but I was not prepared for how much the play flowed right into this idea, and it sort of moved from being like a clever as I— I see a concept into being, "Oh, no, this is like a real— this is a real work."
AMANDA: "Uh-oh. It's happening."
MELODY: Uh-oh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, like, so there's so much really like visceral gory body language in— in Romeo and Juliet. There's a point when Romeo goes— he's going into the graveyard and he's with Balthasar, he's, like, buddy, he's like, you know, helper, friend/servant. And he's— he's trying to shoo Balthasar away and he says like, "If you don't leave me alone, by heaven, I will tear the joint by joint and strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs."
JULIA: Damn, dude. That's zombie stuff.
MELODY: Thank you, Julia. It is zombie stuff. 100%.
AMANDA: It really is.
MELODY: And it turns out that Shakespeare was writing Romeo and Juliet during the two years that London's theatres were all closed because of the plague. So like you find all of this— all of this stuff that is upsetting, you know, in terms of like death everywhere.
AMANDA: Hmm.
MELODY: And disease and—
AMANDA: Like the infrastructural consequences of such a virulent disease affecting so many people at the same time.
JULIA: And I definitely don't think we'll see any art like that in the near future in our lives times. Not at all.
MELODY: Yeah. I don't think so, either.
AMANDA: Yeah. No, no, no. The— the 10-year anniversary of your play in 2024 just like ra— like nothing kind of contemporaneous about that. Uh-uh.
JULIA: Yeah. Not at all. Not at all.
MELODY: The really, really exciting discovery that took me into a whole new level with the creation of my play, there's this plot point in Romeo and Juliet, about the Searchers of the town, when Friar Laurence is doing the whole plan with Juliet that she's going to have a potion that's going to make her seem dead, and then he's going to send a note to Romeo, and be like, "Come back and get her."
AMANDA: Regular friar behavior.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Normal, normal thing to do for teens. Yeah.
MELODY: Super normal. In his lab brewing up potions. Sidebar, also Mantua and Verona, like when I read this play, originally, I was like, "Oh, you know, 100 miles— wait, no, they're like 20 miles."
JULIA: They're not that far.
MELODY: No.
AMANDA: That's not far.
JULIA: That's like less than a day travel on horse, let's be honest with each other.
MELODY: Seriously, so the message doesn't get to Romeo because the— the, like, buddy friar, Friar John, who's supposed to take the message, is stayed in a house by the Searchers of the town. You know, again, having done the play, I never noticed that text. I'd certainly noticed the part that's about the message didn't go.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: But, like, reading it from the perspective of this— this idea that I had, I was like, "Who the heck are the Searchers of the town?"
JULIA: Yeah. What does that mean?
MELODY: Do you know?
JULIA: I don't. I genuinely don't. I was like, "I guess I just glazed over that fact when we were doing it as well. And, like, that means nothing to me."
MELODY: It's wild that we don't have this information. It took a bunch of searching.
JULIA: For the Searchers. The Searchers— yeah, yeah. The Searchers of the town was a municipal job that was present in towns all over Europe, from the early Middle Ages well into Shakespeare's time, held by two grown women, which on the face of it is bizarre, because this is— women with jobs in the era when women are being, you know, shoved into the house and told, "This is your place."
AMANDA: Women with job.
JULIA: Women with job.
AMANDA: If they had family, they would sort of swear off communication. They lived apart in a little house on the edge of town. They didn't speak much in public, but you would recognize them because everywhere they went, they carried a two-foot white wand.
AMANDA: Oh.
MELODY: And their whole job was to examine dead bodies and determine if they had died of the plague or not.
JULIA: Whoa.
AMANDA: Wow. That's an incredibly interesting historical role that I had no idea about.
MELODY: Yeah. I was gobsmacked when I— when I read this. I was like, "Oh, my goodness." Because Shakespeare handed me two female characters for my sequel, who were essentially definitionally zombie hunters.
JULIA: Historical zombie hunters. That's wild. That's so cool.
AMANDA: Incredible.
MELODY: So yeah. And, you know, like, also, I do not doubt that if Shakespeare were writing in a time women were in the theatre acting, he went and wrote those roles, because they're incredible parts.
JULIA: It's a cool job to have. Yeah.
MELODY: Yeah. So— so my play— the two Searchers become really important central characters.
AMANDA: It sounds like not just the sort of unfinished part of Romeo and Juliet. And not just the sort of explanation, you know, created from this— this sort of scene in the opera of the dead bodies standing up, but also like the genre and kind of tropes of horror were a big inspiration for you in R & J & Z. So can you tell us a little bit about how not just the presence of zombies or Z being a helpful letter, you know, to— to indicate zombies or— or gesture at it? How did like horror as a genre, as a form, something that you love outside of theater, inform the writing of the play?
MELODY: I love horror. I love horror movies. I love scary movies. And I am pretty sure from my perspective in my life today, that part of why I love the genre is that it— you know, it has this like really flashy exterior, but what we're doing underneath, I think, is reckoning with what's actually up with humanity. And, you know, like, in this moment when so much feels wrong in our world, but like there are people going along in the surface with some power acting like it's just fine, like business as usual. Like, you want to just scream like, "No, it's not fine." And— and horror exposes that. Horror is an opportunity to expose that. I think that's part of why I love it.
JULIA: Hmm.
MELODY: And because it's sort of like an Emperor's New Clothes genre. Like—
JULIA: Hmm.
MELODY: —it allows us to be like, "Wait a minute, no, when everybody seems fine, what is not fine."
AMANDA: Totally. You're— you're tearing a hole in reality that matches the hole in reality that so many of us experience and see, and just are looking around desperately thinking and feeling like, does anyone else see this too? And when a, you know, satellite crashes with aliens on it, or when a monster emerges from the sewers, or when the, you know, kindly groundskeeper turns out to be something uncanny, it— it matches the feeling, even if we're not talking about literal zombies around us today.
MELODY: Absolutely. Yeah. So there's the, like, deep philosophical aspect of it, but then there's also just, like, the fun of it, you know? So in the same way, I was like, "I want to make sure I write a scene where there's a man who has to stand around and say nothing." I was, like, thinking with her. Like, I really want to— in my research, in my like source work, I want to make myself a list of the thing— the elements I want to put into my play. And there were— like, I had some residency weeks, I was up in— in— on this island, off the coast of Maine to, like, write for bits of time. I would get up in the morning and write and then I would go have lunch. And then I would come back and maybe write a little bit more in this, like, empty, old white house on the hill overlooking the port. And then, as the sun began to set— and, like, you know, it's— it's pretty far out in the Atlantic there. This is Deer Aisle, so the sun sets early in— in fall and— and winter. And I would, like, make myself a little dinner and dial up a scary movie.
AMANDA: In a cabin, in the woods, at night.
MELODY: Yes, yes. And just like scare— scare myself, and— and fall asleep and maybe dream, and then wake up in the morning and write on that— on that feeling. And so, like, there were elements like that thing, where you've got— like, you've got a character and you know they're in trouble. You know, they're in a risky situation, and they're maybe in the foreground of the shot. And there's like— like a light flickering behind them, and the light flickers, and you see there's nothing there. And it goes out, and then the light goes on again. And there's like some hulking monster in the background. And—
JULIA: Classic.
MELODY: Classic. And I was like, "I really want to do that. I'm writing a play with no electric lights."
JULIA: What do I do?
MELODY: What do I do? So I did a thunderstorm. So I wrote— I wrote lightning and there's, this, like, fabulous, scary moment where we actually achieved that effect. And it's so satisfying. Like, it's such a— it's so simple, but it's such a scary— scary moment. And then there was stuff about, like, gore effects and— and fights, which again, like, you know, like, I don't know if y'all got to do any fights when you were doing Shakespeare, but I love a fight.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah. It's— it's textual. They're— Julia's job during Romeo and Juliet was the blood patrol. She did make lots of fake blood.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: And we had a— you know, one of our history teachers who did medieval reenactments on the side, come in—
JULIA: He was a ren faire guy.
AMANDA: —to choreograph our fights, but there was a— a hell of a lot of blood, and sweat, and fluids, and fighting in the play.
MELODY: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we— the first designer we brought onto our team is an absolute genius named Stephanie Cox-Connolly, who designed our gore. She did our gore and effects. And we had— I believe she had three different blood recipes for our premiere, both in Maine and in New York.
JULIA: Nice.
AMANDA: Incredible.
MELODY: Because there's edible blood. There's blood from— that you can bite. There's like squibs, there's big blood for like bigger effects when somebody gets stabbed or whatever.
AMANDA: Of course.
MELODY: And then we had the special Juliet blood from when I— and I— I played Juliet—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: —in those. There have since been many productions around the country, and it's super exciting to see, like, other people taking on these roles. But in that— those original two productions, I— I played Juliet and we had to figure out how I could stab myself and bleed everywhere because that's in the lore of the play. Juliet's blood is a— is an important factor. So it's a— it's another little spoiler but I will tell you what Stephanie designed. Involved a sports bra called The Wine Rack.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: I don't even need more detail, but that— that's the perfect amount of detail.
AMANDA: I mean, that's the perfect amount. Yeah, it is.
MELODY: Yeah, yeah.
JULIA: Yeah. There you go.
MELODY: So I— I bled a lot out of The Wine Rack.
AMANDA: Amazing. And was— was Stephanie's title like director of blood, blood choreographer, executive producer of blood?
JULIA: Chef d'blood.
MELODY: I think it was— chef d'blood sounds right. I mean, I wish we could go back and— and give her that title. I think it was like gore and effect design by—
AMANDA: Incredible. Incre— I— I'm sure that's a real profession, but just this specific idea that it's like you have to get Stephanie. She's the gore sommelier. It's, like, very exciting.
MELODY: 100%. And I— it is a point of pride that, at least at the time, our play was— she said the play that involved— or the production that involved the most amount of blood by volume of anything she'd ever worked on.
JULIA: Excellent.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
JULIA: That— that would be a source of pride for me, at least.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
JULIA: Amazing. That is so cool. And I'm thinking now too, because I— I really want to talk about like Shakespeare and horror, because there are so many Shakespeare plays that are, specifically in my mind, horror productions. Like they're— they're definitely, like, booked as tragedies, but like Macbeth is a horror play when you think about it. Like, the amount of, like, gore, and blood, and also ghosts, and magic and stuff—
MELODY: Yeah.
JULIA: —like, that's a horror play, 100%. And that was another one where I was in charge of the blood in our high school production of that one. And our director specifically during the Banquo banquet scene, where he's standing on the table, wanted kind of a blood dripping out of the mouth effect, so it's like I'm gonna have to create a blood packet mouth thing. And I was so excited. So when you said, "We had three recipes for blood." I'm like, "Well, obviously, the edible blood. Uh-huh. 100%." So that was just so nice to be like, "Ah, yes, I remember that. I remember those days."
MELODY: Yeah. And you're entirely right that Macbeth is a horror play.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: Like every aspect. And— and it's one of the things that— like when I wrote liner notes for our world premiere, I was actually like, "You know what? This isn't that far off from what Shakespeare did." Like, the— the supernatural horror of Macbeth, or the gore of Titus Andronicus, or the— the— like the fairies and you know, supernatural beings of Midsummer Night's Dream. There is so much in Shakespeare's work that is genre fiction.
AMANDA: Do you think that's like an underappreciated element of Shakespeare's works? Because these days, we associate genre as low culture, as feminine, as cheap or trashy, because, I don't know, lots of femme people enjoy it.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Because misogyny. You can just say because misogyny.
MELODY: Because misogyny 100%. And also, yeah, I— I— Amanda, I think you're onto something that, like, Shakespeare has this sort of like hoity-toity usage today and people with a lot of power in the hierarchy of our, you know, current systems want to claim that power for their own. But, actually, it is like horror, queer as— as you can get, you know what I mean? It's completely about those of us who are othered.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: And I think that there is a ton of power in engaging with Shakespeare from that— from that perspective, from a perspective that says, you know, like, "This doesn't only belong to the king in the play."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: "This belongs to, you know, the people who were far lower down on the rungs of society's ladder."
JULIA: And I— I love that you have taken something that is so quintessential horror, which is the— the zombie. Ever since George Romero has, like, kind of reconceptualized the zombie. It has been such a quintessential aspect of horror.
MELODY: I would also say, you know, Romeo and Juliet themselves know each other for, like, five days. And, like, honestly, almost anyone can be madly in love for five days, and the opportunity to go further with it, to actually, like, bring them back together and let them reckon with what has happened, and try and figure out like how— how they actually liked each other. That was also a really great opportunity in writing a— a sequel. And beyond that, on the subject of zombies to— you know, put on my Coke bottle glasses for a moment. Noam Chomsky was asked at some point— at one point when, like, zombie— there was just like a— a huge burst of zombie movies and fictional all over in— in our culture. He was asked like, 'Why? Why do you think? What's going on here?" And he said, "Whenever one part of a society has its boot on the neck of another part of society, everyone knows that something's wrong."
JULIA: Hmm.
MELODY: "And everyone is waiting for the moment when that group that is being oppressed, rises up and throws that boot off their neck, and sets about writing the balance." And Chomsky's take was that the— our zombie stories are reckoning with that.
JULIA: Yeah. That is really powerful and I think that's absolutely true. Like, zombie as a genre is something that is always like a very political story. And when we see reoccurrences of it, it's usually around times where there is oppression, so he's— he's right on the money with that. I love it.
AMANDA: I wonder what Noam Chomsky's email inbox was like. It just seems like he got asked the most interesting questions.
MELODY: I mean, that's real.
JULIA: Why don't we take a quick break here? We'll go grab our refill. And then when we get back, Melody, we have a bunch of questions about folklore and your upcoming projects.
MELODY: Love it.
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AMANDA: Hello, everybody. It's Amanda. And welcome to the refill. Welcome, especially to our newest patrons, Prakhya and Cory who just upgraded their tier. Supporting producer-level patrons are the backbone of our business, of our podcast, what make this our job. So thank you, Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Arianna, Ginger Spurs Boi, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Jeremiah, Kneazlekins, Lily, Matthew, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, and Scott. And our legend-level patrons, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Michael, Morgan H., Sarah, and Bea Me Up Scotty. As I meet more and more of you at live shows, I'm collecting you like Pokemon cards and it feels wonderful. If you would like to join our Patreon, get years and years' worth of bonus episodes and recipe cards and director's commentary, you should. It gets to be a better and better deal with each passing month, patreon.com/spiritspodcast. There's a lot going on in the world right now. I don't know about you, but being on the internet feels dicey sometimes. And one place that I know I can go and really get, like, considered, and thoughtful, and excellent, and stuff that I know I need to hear, and read, and teaches me something about the world is Capital B news. This is a local national nonprofit news organization that centers black voices, audience needs, and experiences, and partners with the communities they serve. They have places in Gary, Indiana and Atlanta, Georgia, and they were founded by Lauren Williams, Gillian White, and Akoto Ofori-Atta. Akoto is someone I was able to collaborate with a few years back on a podcast and that's how I first found out about Capital B news. It's excellent. They have incredible social media. They have incredible newsletters, articles, anything you want to know about black needs, voices, and experiences in America. You should check out Capital B news. That's capitalbnews.org. We have a ton going on all the time here with Spirits and Multitude. We're working on some new Spirits merch, but we can't launch it until our previous merch has been sold out. So if you are in the mood for, let's say, a creepy, cool pullover, a color-changing mug, a bath bomb, shirts, and pins, and stickers, and all kinds of incredible stuff, including by the way, a downloadable coloring book with expansion pack that you can go ahead and buy. We have a couple of flasks left. And, of course, the cool cryptid compendium that Julio created with Eric Silver. It's a digital PDF that you download. All incredible stuff. You can go ahead to spiritspodcast.com/merch and buy it now. And at Multitude, there have been some incredible episodes out recently from Exolore, a show by astrophysicist and folklorist Dr. Moiya McTier, about what life is like on planets different from our own, how writers create fictional worlds, and reviewing worlds that Dr. McTier finds interesting and cool. I love listening to Exolore. It's a really good show for transit, if you want to kind of immerse yourself in an interview, or review, or a just wonderful episode about building worlds. I find that so comforting to take with me on a train, or plane, or car trip. Go ahead and check out the almost 100 episodes of Exolore that there are for you to enjoy in your podcast app or at exolorepod.com. And finally, we are sponsored this week by Naked Wines. Now, Julia knows a lot about wine. I just like wine. I enjoy like a crisp a glass of Rose, or white wine, or my new favorite, orange wine, especially when the temperatures are hot. It just feels like— I don't know, spirits make me sweaty and wine is just like a nice thing I can sip and stay cool. But I don't really know at all how to select wines. I don't have a good sense of which ones I like. I kind of picked by the label, or by color, frankly. And so I really appreciate that we are sponsored by Naked Wines, a subscription service that seamlessly connects you to the finest independent winemakers on the planet. That means you get a box of the market's best quality wines, however often you'd like for a fraction of the price you would normally pay in stores. I really love this stuff. I have friends over who like wine, I'm like, "Oh, look, here is my selection from Naked Wines." I usually get like half white and half red. Though in the summertime, I love a white and Rose especially. And last night, I opened up a Pinot Gris, which I now know I enjoy, because Naked Wines sent one to me based on their quiz about our tastes and the kinds of wine we enjoy. Including just like tasting notes like, "Oh, I like chocolate. I like fruit. I like acid," when— like me, you can't really tell what kind of wine you like. Absolutely incredible. They've been around for over 15 years and they fund over 90 independent winemakers. 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JULIA: We are back. And Melody, one of the things that I always love to ask our guests here on the show is, what have you been enjoying lately in terms of beverages? Whether that is cocktails, mocktails, coffee creations, tea creations, maybe you're super into seltzers right now? I don't know. What have you been enjoying?
MELODY: I love this question. I'm not that much of a drinker, but I will say I have a deep love for cocktails that involve St. Germain.
JULIA: Ooh.
AMANDA: Yes.
MELODY: St. Germain. Cute elderflower, very fairy vibes. And I'm also a fan of butterfly pea flower tea.
JULIA: Ooh.
AMANDA: Yes. Magical.
MELODY: Just all magic over here today.
JULIA: I recently had a great like low-ABV apertivo kind of beverage that was like St. Germain and Creme de violette, and would highly recommend that if you just need like kind of a refreshing, lighter botanical drink for the summer days because it was so nice, so refreshing. I think if I added like a little bit more lime to it, it would have been perfect. And I was in love.
MELODY: So cute.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Someone at my community garden, we had a potluck recently, and she brought a mason jar of butterfly pea flower tea—
MELODY: Whoa.
AMANDA: —made from her own damn flowers.
JULIA: Whoa.
AMANDA: And I was like [gasps]— just— just— forget it. Like, someone's— someone's won the potluck and it's not me, because she had like a squeeze bottle of lemon and the jar of tea. And I was just like, "I give up." So good.
JULIA: There wasn't a competition, but that person made it a competition.
AMANDA: She won. Yeah.
JULIA: Melody, as magical as those drinks sound, I think we really got a good insight into kind of your inspiration for Shakespeare and all things kind of folklore and fairy tale and stuff with that story about doing A Midsummer Night's Dream on the shores of an Oregon lake.
MELODY: Yeah.
JULIA: Amazing. Was there any other, like, stories that you remember from your childhood in terms of, like, folklore and fairy tales that was particularly inspiring to you?
MELODY: Yeah. Man, I loved fairy tales. I still do, from, you know, the minute anyone told me my first bedtime story. When I was in college, I was in a two-semester playing Shakespeare class for which we did— we basically did like LARPing once a week. We invented Elizabethan characters and we would go to court.
AMANDA: Amazing.
JULIA: Cool.
AMANDA: I'm jealous.
MELODY: Yeah. It was— it was legit. And in inventing our characters, the professor gave us all of this— all of these writing assignments. One of them was to make a list of all of our favorite characters from fiction, and then another was all of our favorite characters from fairy tales. And I did all my homework, I made my lists. And then I was like proofreading and went back, and read those two lists and almost every character on the fiction list was male, and every character on the fairytale list was female.
JULIA: Hmm.
MELODY: And I was like, "This is something. This is something real."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: Because they were being heroes in both cases. And it's just that I found— I found people who shared my gender in the fairytales, and I ended up— I was in a— a smaller college within the University of Oregon and I had to write a thesis. My thesis ended up being about the heroine's journey in fairy tales.
JULIA: Hmm.
MELODY: And for that, I went back and did all this, like, intense research into the tales that I loved as a child. And they, you know, include stories like Cap-o'-Rushes, which is Cinderella tale type.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: Or Cordelia and Lear is another version of this tale type. Like if you get into the Arn Thompson fairy tale—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: —types, right? Like—
AMANDA: We know the matrix, yep.
JULIA: ATU, we know.
MELODY: All of it? Yes? And that is— like, in Cap-o'-Rushes, it is a story of king with three daughters, ask them to tell him how much they love him. The two older girls make up all this nonsense that's very flowery and totally insincere, but he's flattered by it. And then his youngest daughter, who truly loves him, is so kind of put off by this pageant that's happening, that she kind of leans into her own stubbornness and— and answers him, "I love you as fresh meat loves salt."
JULIA: Hmm.
MELODY: And he's furious. He's furious. And he exiles her, he kicks her out of the country. And then— and she goes on this wild adventure and for— and finds her way to a happily ever after.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: Part of what I learned writing a thesis about it was really just giving language to something that I felt even as a little girl reading these stories, which is that they are telling us truths that go way back in human existence.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: Many of these stories could easily be 10,000 years old, or older, you know, in terms of traveling and oral traditions around the world. And my thesis, my belief, which is supported by some significant scholarship, is that we are in a 5,000-year or so blip in human civilization, which is defined by hierarchical structures.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: But that the vast majority of human existence has been in a more partnership mode, where there's still authority, there's still, you know, like differentials in power and— and—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: —wealth. But in a partnership structure, the baseline is everyone has what they need to thrive, and we intrinsically understand that I can't be free unless all of us are free. And, you know, dominator structure has really deadly functioning, like, guideline, which is that I have to— I have to get above you if I can, and your well-being means nothing, mine means everything, which is awful. So I find in fairy tales a reinforcement of that partnership baseline, certainly within that comes the lesson that girls can save the world, too.
JULIA: I love that. That's beautiful. And I'm— I'm really excited to kind of hear how that is being translated into your upcoming project, which is the Enchanted Islands, the living art story project. Can you tell us a little bit about that? And I know that you've done a couple of other versions of this in the past, but what are you excited about in the upcoming version?
MELODY: Yeah. I love this project. It's really near and dear to my heart. Last summer, I started— I embarked on this collaborative endeavor, which is a collaboration with brilliant costume artist Jennifer Parr, who actually costumed me in that very first professional acting job that I booked up in Maine. So we have a long— a long history of working together.
JULIA: Aw.
MELODY: And a sculptor who lives up on Deer Aisle and has spent the last several decades, many decades of his life creating a multi-acre woodland art park that includes his sculpture, but also like buildings. There's a grail castle in the woods, there's a chapel, there's like an old west town. It's— it's amazing.
JULIA: Amazing.
MELODY: Yeah. That's Peter Beerits. Look him up. Great, amazing Maine sculptor. And so, in 2019, I wrote a play called Avalon which is my feminist radical retelling of the Grail story, the whole, you know, Arthur, Morgan le Fay, Merlin. And we did it. We staged it in Peter Beerits' woods. And he built a wizards tower for it. I got to go up— while I was writing the play, I got to go up and see. It's a three-story incredible tower. But while it was under construction, I went up and I was up on this— the second level looking down into the woods behind, and I saw this huge— what looked like a— like 25-foot diameter nest made of tree branches. And I turned to Peter, the sculptor, and I was like, "Peter, is that a roc's nest?" And he looked at me and he was like, "Melody, you know what a roc is?" And so we had this moment of ,like, wonderful connection around our—
JULIA: Hmm.
MELODY: —our own childhood love of the tales from The Thousand and One Nights.
AMANDA: Incredible. And I had in that moment, this thought, "Oh, I should write a fairy tale that I can tell from that nest." So that's the origin of this— of the Enchanted Islands project. And it has been an opportunity to marry my lifelong love of fairy stories, fairy lore, folklore, with my love of playing dress-up. And this incredible, natural and our landscape. So last summer, I wrote three original fairy tales. One is my version of Cap-o'-Rushes, which we were talking about earlier. I wrote a very gender expansive take on the 12 Dancing Princesses.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
MELODY: And then I wrote an all— a completely original tale of my own called All the Birds of the World. And then I worked with Jennifer, who created, like, couture costumes for each— each of the tales—
JULIA: Whoa.
MELODY: —which do— in the way that costume can, they do storytelling themselves. Cap—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: The Cap-o'-Rushes Kappa costume starts as a cloak that looks like the woods, like it's covered in, you know, leaves, and birds' nests, and all kinds of in— it's like camouflage. And then it does a transformation.
JULIA: Whoa.
MELODY: Where it does this— it's actually the same mechanism that the Cinderella— the Broadway Cinderella transformation dress does. So the— the cloak, like, comes off, and I spin, and suddenly, it's a dress made of starlight.
AMANDA: Amazing.
MELODY: Yeah. I mean, I love it. I love it.
AMANDA: And talk about the magic of theater where a— you know, a place can inspire a work that then enchants the place and, you know, the work of so many collaborators and folks you've met along the way, add up to this thing that couldn't be a product of anybody else, which is one of the things I love most about seeing and just loving theater.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: I 100% can feel the continuum between that Midsummer Night's Dream on the shores of Odell Lake and what I'm doing here in the woods of Maine. And it is about reaching for that electric magic that I felt that first time I saw, you know, Taming of the Shrew or whatever like— and maybe a Thousand and One Nights image, but the image of a— a tent being bigger inside than you— it looked from the outside. And I feel like that's what we're doing if we're lucky and true of heart when we make art together. Like, we're making something that is bigger inside because of all of us coming together to make it—
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
MELODY: —than it is on the outside. Like, no one of us could do this on our own. I just find that so delightful, and it's also— this project is an opportunity to kind of not be bothered by the fact that I don't know what genre it belongs in.
JULIA: Sometimes things, you know, they don't have to exist in a genre. Genre is a good way of us to, like, tell other people what it's about, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it needs to fall into one specific category. And I— I love when something is outside of it.
AMANDA: I think genderfuck and genrefuck are BFFs who hold hands all the time.
JULIA: Oh, yeah.
AMANDA: And that makes me really happy.
MELODY: I mean, goddess bless, yes to that.
AMANDA: Melody, I imagine that our listeners, like Julia and myself, are going to want to learn more about you and your work, see it in person if they possibly can. Would you let them know where to follow you and your artistic worlds online?
MELODY: Absolutely. Yeah, you can find me at melodybates.com You can also follow me on Instagram that's @xxxooomelody. Through those access points, you can find the website that's about the Enchanted Islands project. I will be up in Maine, August 1st through 7th. Nervous Nellie's Jams & Jellies, that is the name— the official name of the venue where the woodland art installation is.
AMANDA: Incredible.
MELODY: And I'll be doing the three stories I wrote last summer plus an all-new story and new costume. It is my version of the fairy tale Diamonds and Toads.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
MELODY: Good one. With— complete with what is basically like the frilliest fairy godmother costume you can imagine.
JULIA: And you can find links to all of those things that Melody just mentioned in the show notes of this episode. And Melody, thank you so much for joining us. This was such a delight. What a great conversation, everything from blood packets to frilly dresses. What a— what a great combo.
MELODY: I mean, #mylife.
JULIA: And the next time you are out in the woods and see a roc's nest, remember, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
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