The Tartan

Carnegie Mellon School of Drama’s production of “Ghosts” was showcased from Feb. 26 to March 1 in the Philip Chosky Theater at the Purnell Center for the Arts. Many people poured themselves into this adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts,” from the actors, to the dramaturgs, to the scenic designers. To better understand “Ghosts,” I had the opportunity to talk to the director, Carlos E. Martínez, who provided insight into the work and motivation behind the production.

Martínez first viewed a professional recording of Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts,” a performance adapted and directed by Richard Eyre and showcased at the West End Theater in London, back in 2014. Although initially excited to view the production, he ultimately found the play to be depressing and lackluster.

It wasn’t until he took a directing class at the Savannah College of Art and Design during his senior year of undergraduate studies that he would once again come across Ibsen’s “Ghosts” as the professor teaching the class decided that would be the play they would analyze for the semester. What piqued his interest in “Ghosts” this time around was his professor’s remarks of “Ghosts” being one of the first “AIDS plays,” a term used about “any work of theater that deals or touches upon AIDS or any kind of modern epidemic.”

His professor went on to explain that during Ibsen’s time, there was a negative stigma against individuals affected by syphilis, the disease Helene Alving’s son, Oswald, is suffering from, a fact that is never made explicit in the play. “This poor young man is labeled negatively by his disease, which is outside of his control, and this is very similar to the experience of people that are HIV positive or have AIDS,” Martínez said.

The professor who taught the class is a member of the LGBTQIA+ community who lived through the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. In reading “Ghosts,” he interpreted the play through his lens. “That kind of taught me that these kinds of works evolve through time, and that was actually something that made the play suddenly really exciting for me,” Martínez added.

In directing “Ghosts,” Martínez stated that in the original play, all of the events take place in a living room. Throughout the play, characters in “Ghosts” discuss events that occurred in the past and that are happening in the present, but the audience can’t see those events unfold, something Martínez decided to change. 

He borrowed an idea from a previous play he directed, “Noises Off,” which is a comedy about a group of actors putting on a play. In “Noises Off,” you are able to see the backstage of the play, so you get to see the play the actors put on, which is a concept the director implemented into “Ghosts.” “It would be so cool if we could see those things,” he said. “I thought that it raised the stakes and made it a little challenge for me, because suddenly we had to time everything perfectly.”

The original “Ghosts” play also included the characters speaking French as a second language, something Martínez altered when directing this play by having the actors speak Spanish instead. “Spanish itself was something that I was closer to than French, because I’m a Spanish speaker, and so was Jesus, and so was another assistant dramaturg,” Martínez said.

Martínez asked a friend from Barcelona to record the lines, which were then sent to the actors, thus having the play make references to Barcelona instead of Paris, which was the city being alluded to in the original play. “Similar to Paris, it [Barcelona] was a city that was flourishing with artistry at the time. [Oswald] being an artist, it made sense that if he spoke Spanish and was living somewhere in Europe, it would be Barcelona,” Martínez said.

In Martínez’s adaptation of “Ghosts,” the character of Pastor Manders was changed to Reverend Mother Monika and the religion practiced was changed from Lutheranism to Catholicism. “It made the play about the queer experience, because in the original the main character of the mom [Helene Alving] and the pastor had a flame, and then we just kept the flame with these two women,” he said. “That raised the stakes in this conservative society of this imagined version of Norway.”

Martínez noted the societal constraints placed on women in the play and how it is symbolically represented throughout the performance. “All the characters in the show that are women were prisoners in some capacity,” he said. “The mom [Johanna] was a prisoner of her own marriage. Regina was a prisoner of her mom, and the nun is a prisoner of the expectations and reputations that come with being a religious figure.” This dynamic inspired the slats in the wall, which resemble prison bars.

Last year, Martínez’s friend, Jasmine Roth, directed Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” as her thesis production. Martínez noted the serendipitous nature of his production of “Ghosts,” which serves as a “spiritual sequel” to “A Doll’s House,” being his senior thesis a year later.

He has watched Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” and, recently on Broadway, “An Enemy of the People.” He also read “When We Dead Awaken,” which Martínez said is the one he gravitates the most towards. “It’s about a couple that goes to this, like, spa retreat, and then they start drifting apart. And then they each meet someone else in this retreat, and then they all die because of an avalanche.”

He added that “Ibsen was very close to the environment and nature and how we really can’t control everything.”

For his undergraduate degree, Martínez studied scenic design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, a background that galvanized his career in directing. “I just love the ability to just paint in the three dimensional space,” he said. “It’s a wonderful process and a passion of mine to put things together, performance wise, to make something visually interesting.”

“I find it energizing and electrifying to take something that exists only on pen and paper and make it real, having and leading those meetings, bringing people together, pulling the strengths out of the designers and the actors. It’s a really passionate thing that I like to do, and that I envision myself building a career out of.”

Every year, the graduating class of the School of Drama gets the opportunity to travel to New York and Los Angeles to showcase their work to industry professionals and alumni. If you would like to support their venture, consider donating to them here.