Politics, art, culture and history have always been closely intertwined and influence one another in many ways. In particular, politics and art seem to intersect the most often.
Dave Frazier, a theatre major at Winthrop, is well aware of this. He is spending this semester working on a short film which is based on a one-act play he wrote last year. The short film is being shot incrementally over the course of the semester as time and the availability of the cast allow.
The short film and the play are both based on the life of the Roman emperor Nero. He was the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Frazier said.
Frazier’s interest in the history of the Roman Empire is something that he referred to as a “pastime.” “I’ve always found ancient Rome fascinating,” he said.
Frazier said while he does not directly compare the two, he sees the Roman Empire as the ancient equivalent to the modern day United States. “In some ways, Rome was also a very progressive society but also regressive simultaneously,” he said.
Even the most cursory of studies in to life under Nero’s reign would reveal conditions that could very well fit the definition of regressive. However, Frazier’s knowledge of Nero and his life has led him to create a character that might make us think differently about the notoriously brutal Roman emperor. In describing the process of turning Nero into a character, Frazier drew comparisons between Nero and Shakespeare’s character Hamlet. Frazier describes Nero as an “anti-Hamlet figure.”
“Whereas Hamlet was more driven by duty, Nero was sort of escaping from duty but at the same time he was also a visionary,” he said.
While history has not remembered Nero kindly, Frazier said that Nero was underrated and “didn’t get enough representation in our own modern drama.”
“He himself was a very proud actor,” he continued, “He as emperor enjoyed acting in a point of history where acting was considered a very low position.”
Frazier described the process of writing the play, which the short film is based on, as “very enlightening.” Frazier went on to detail how working on this project has inspired him to expand the play beyond just one act.
“What I really want to do is make this in to a trilogy,” he said, “Of three three-act plays.”
Frazier said that the one-act play that the short film is based on is a condensed version of the future trilogy. He said that the script follows Nero’s life from the time he became emperor until his “demise.”
In describing the influences for this project, Frazier said that he “took a lot of influence from Seneca’s tragedies” as well as a “tiny bit from Shakespeare.” Frazier said that Seneca, who was Nero’s tutor, also shows up as a character in his play.
“I wanted to do a character who starts out with a sort of child-like innocence but ends becoming someone absolutely corrupted by power at the end of his life,” Frazier said of Nero.
