Kevin Wetmore is a Professor of Theatre Arts and the Program Director for the MFA in Performance Pedagogy. He has been with CFA for over twenty years. He has an astounding academic career that includes writing 12 books, editing 19 volumes, publishing over 100+ book chapters, and dozens of short stories. In 2025, Wetmore received LMU’s Rains Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Works.
At LMU, he is the founder and Artistic Director of Shakespeare on the Bluff: A 90-100-minute-long outdoor performance featuring different Shakespeare plays on the Drollinger family Stage. Shakespeare on the Bluff is also free to the public; so, families, friends, and neighbors can enjoy this free event during the summer. Currently, Shakespeare on the Bluff will be running its ninth season, and will be featuring two plays, “The Comedy of Errors” and “Hamlet.” Wetmore is also a six-time Bram Stoker Award nominee and serves as the co-chair of the LA Chapter of the Horror Writers Association.
On top of that, he is also LMU’s resident certified stage combat fight choreographer. He has a BA in Classical Dramatic Studies from Bates College, an MA in Theatre Studies from University of Leeds, a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from University of Pittsburgh, and lastly, an MA in Theological Studies from LMU. He is also the mastermind behind The Haunting of Hannon. Wetmore’s resume is also 72 pages long! In this segment, we decided to ask Wetmore 15 of our burning questions. Here is what he said:
Q: How do free/public performances change your approach to storytelling?
A: They don’t really. The only thing that might change my approach to storytelling is knowing who is the audience. So, for example, the tone and approach to the family-friendly version of The Haunting of Hannon is very different from the evening Haunting of Hannon, which is aimed at adults and college students. The former is “spoopy” – scary silly; the latter is designed to fill adults with dread and give them laughs along the way. So, the idea that Shakespeare on the Bluff is free changes nothing, the idea that it is open for families means I am aware there may be teens, tweens, and younger kids present, but that awareness doesn’t change the approach.
Q: How would you describe your directing philosophy?
A: Collaborate with actors, designers and other artists to open up the play and explore its contents, themes, ideas. But ultimately, my duty is to the audience. Theatre comes from the Greek “Theatron,” “the seeing place,” –– meaning theatre is the only art named not after what the artist does, but what the people who encounter the art do. It is only theatre if there is an audience, otherwise it’s just rehearsing. So, everything on the stage is aimed at giving the audience a complete experience that helps them understand the play, the story, the characters, and go on this journey with us. I’ve been directing Shakespeare for 37 years and I always approach his plays thinking about the people who will come see it. In those 37 years, he has never shown up, so my duty is to the people who are there.
Q: How much room do you leave for spontaneity in performance?
A: I always say I rehearse to develop complete characters in a world they share. So, there is always room for growth, discovery, experiment. Except for moments of violence, which must be closely choreographed, there is always room, if the actors have done the work, to be spontaneous and make new discoveries about these moments we are creating.
Q: What qualities do you look for in actors performing Shakespeare outdoors?
A: First and foremost, are they right for the role? Are they interesting? Do they make bold choices? Can they project? Which are also the same qualities I look for in actors performing anything anywhere.
Q: How does the presence of the audience in a public space change the energy of the show?
A: It’s less the audience in a public space than the idea that the world around us keeps moving. So, there are cars driving past, groups of people walking by the space while performances are going on. We’ve had sirens blaring as vehicles drive behind and past the stage, the music of dance parties for the high school students on campus for summer camps, kids riding past on bikes yelling at the performers – theatre is live and when you are out in public you know you have no control over anything that happens off-stage around you.
Q: Are there specific themes in “Hamlet” you want to emphasize for today’s audience?
A: I’ve taken a “dark academia” approach to the text. Books are mentioned frequently and so many of the characters are students: Hamlet, Horatio, Rosencranz and Guildenstern are all students at the University of Wittenberg, Laertes attends the University of Paris. Polonius talks about his days in college, and there are a number of discussions that feel like college students talking late at night, going back and forth between deep philosophical discussion and then cracking stupid, dirty jokes. I also see the plight of Hamlet – a very privileged young man – he’s the prince, after all, who recognizes the deep corruption of the state – every crown hides a crime as marketing has put it. So, what do intellectual, privileged people do when confronted by a corrupt state and a problematic ruler? That strikes me as deeply relevant in today’s society.
Q: Did current events or social issues influence your interpretation?
A: See the answer to the question above. Hamlet’s solution to a corrupt state is to put on a play. Me? Same.
Q: Why do you think this play resonates today?
A: It’s so huge. Sitting in rehearsal feels like listening to a Shakespeare’s greatest hits quotation machine. Even those who have never read Hamlet are familiar with the image of the young man holding a skull and “to be or not to be…” It’s permeated our culture. But it also asks unanswerable questions, three in the morning questions: what is the point of it all? Why do we go on? What do we do when it feels like there is nothing we can do? Can one ‘be cruel to be kind’? The ideas resonate strongly, but oddly so does the situation. Hamlet has gone off to college, his father dies, his mother remarries, he does not get along with his stepfather, his college friends are distant and untrustworthy, his girlfriend back home is now part of a problematic relationship, the whole thing feels not like a prince dealing with existential issues, but what happens to many people who go to college: the world changes and they grow less certain of whom to trust, or how to deal with the knowledge of how corrupt and problematic the world is, and how one is complicit in that corruption
Q: How do you make centuries-old language feel urgent and contemporary?
A: I don’t think we have to. (Okay, well maybe a little). I cut the scripts for Shakespeare on the Bluff and tend to remove the references that no one will get, the more challenging lines, etc. But for me the beauty of Shakespeare is not the poetry, but how well he understands what it simply is to be human. The individual lines resonate because we feel these ways, too, we’ve had these ideas too. The mistake, I find, is in trying to focus on the poetry, which is there whether one focuses on it or not. Focus on the human, the common experiences, and the language becomes immediate and obvious.
Q: You are a massive horror fan as well as being a classical Shakespeare director. How do you balance these different interests?
A: No need to balance. They both live in the same world: storytelling. There’s a lot of horror in Hamlet: a ghost, murder, plotting, conspiracies, a scene in a graveyard in which people play with skulls. That’s all horror. And there is a lot of Shakespeare in horror. In fact, a few years back for The Haunting of Hannon, the annual library literary haunted house I write and direct every year, we did a show called “Secret, Dark and Midnight Things” which was all horror scenes from Shakespeare – and he has a ton.
Q: Did you make any notable cuts or adaptations to the “Hamlet” script?
A: One must. Uncut Hamlet runs around five hours, and we have cut it down to a little under two. So, decisions have to be made what scenes, what characters, what lines are kept and which must be sacrificed so we can have two hours traffic on the stage. I hope the cut is such that the audience cannot tell what has been cut and what has. what’s also unique is because LMU has a First Folio (only 235 surviving copies exist in the world, and Hannon Library has one! How cool is that!), we do Folio text productions. Some of the lines that people know are not in the Folio text, but only in the 1603 Quarto text. So, those familiar with the play might think a word is missing or an actor got a line wrong, but that’s just the Folio version of the script.
Q: What has been the most fun or chaotic scene you’ve had the chance of directing over the course of LMU’s 9 seasons of Shakespeare on the Bluff?
A: The battle scene in Troilus and Cressida. Just all kinds of violence happening and dozens of folks running across the stage fighting each other. That was chaotic fun.
Q: Considering your horror-loving background, could we expect a tragedy such as King Lear or Macbeth in the future?
A: We’re actually slowly working our way through the entire canon of Shakespeare’s plays. So, we’ve done almost half by this point. We did Macbeth three years ago. I’m hanging on to Lear, but next year we’re doing the three Henry VI plays, which has a spirit summoning, an exorcism, La Pucelle talks to the devil – there’s all sorts of supernatural hijinks in that one. But Hamlet is, I suspect, our official spooky play. We’re working on ways to make it uncanny.
Q: What do you hope first-time Shakespeare viewers take away from this production?
A: I hope they enjoy it and want to come back next year and see more. We love people who join the ‘fam,’ so to speak and make Shakespeare on the Bluff a yearly ritual.
Q: If Shakespeare were alive today, how do you think he’d respond to your production of “Hamlet”?
A: He’d love it. Thank me personally and buy me a drink for making him look so good. Then I’d have to buy him 38 for writing such wonderful plays for us to play in.