Actor Regan Linton plays Don John, Don Pedro’s bastard sibling, in Much Ado about Nothing. In this email exchange with Prologue editor Catherine Foster, she talks about war, wheelchairs and what her character brings to the play.  

Don John is a dark force in Much Ado. Can you talk about her backstory a bit and what her role is in the play?

RL: From Shakespeare’s text, we don’t know a lot about the backstory. The soldiers have been off at war, and Don John has “stood out” against her brother, Don Pedro, which has led to Claudio’s promotion. And yes, she’s the bastard. So I like to think that she embodies the forgotten, ostracized “other.” Perhaps she’s worked tirelessly since childhood to achieve, but because of her station in life she’s been eternally relegated to a lower status. She’ll always be second fiddle . . . or third. I think that would make any person frustrated, and if it happens long enough, it can push a person over the edge.

I think the play would be pretty idealistic and boring without Don John; she brings some honest human vulnerability to the story. And I think from her perspective, she’s doing the right thing. One person’s enemy is another person’s hero; one person’s uprising/revolt is another’s revolution. And who knows what kinds of things Don Pedro or Claudio could have done—particularly in war—that they see as “right” but that unnerve Don John. To me, she’s a balance to the play’s jovial idealism—the yin to its yang.

Don John is written as a male character. Do you think being female changes the dynamic in the play at all?

RL: Absolutely. The play is largely about gender roles and expectations: in love, in marriage, in life. So I think making Don John female makes the character more complicated and creates a uniquely honest, justifiable reason for her to be dissatisfied with what the world offers her. She doesn’t want to fit into Barbie dresses and fawn over the guys, and therefore she’s the outsider. Even Beatrice—the “strong” one—has to play the part to some extent and cannot directly act on her frustrations after her cousin is wronged. “Oh, that I were a man,” she says.

I also think Don John uses these gender expectations to trick Don Pedro and Claudio. Do they trust her again because they don’t expect a woman to enact such treachery? Well . . . surprise! I like that our expectation of villainy gets complicated by Don John’s gender.

How did you prepare to play Don John?

RL: Mostly I studied and broke down the language to make it as simple and straightforward as possible. What exactly is Don John saying, and how does it apply to her? I also thought a good deal about the details of her story, particularly in relation to her military service as a woman. I watched and read a fair amount about women in the military, which is seriously eye-opening, particularly when it comes to the psychological trauma experienced by women who have been assaulted by their peers. It sure made me mad, which was helpful in composing Don John.

Do your injuries and your experiences as someone who uses a wheelchair help you to understand what is driving Don John?

RL: A bit. I think Don John is a survivor, and she’s good at adapting to the situation and muscling forward. She’s determined, and while wheels may complicate things, she’s going to persevere onward. Her injury may occasionally be a source of ire, but it’s more of an annoyance . . . the fact that she has to push around on the thick grass at Leonato’s compound is laughably stupid to her. The chair is just one more obstacle the universe or her adversaries have thrown in her way, but she’s gonna take it, make it her own and use it to her advantage. So I think her approach is like, “Really, Claudio?! This is all you got?! You think this will hold me down?! You just watch and wait.” (Cue wheelchair tank wheels crushing the compound gates.) I think there’s a bit of that in [me], too.

You maneuver your wheelchair around the stage in an almost dance-like manner, with figure-eights and wheelies. There isn’t a specific wheelchair choreographer, so how did you work out the choreography?

RL: It comes from 13 years of practice and wheel-physics awareness. Movement is important to me; I think a wheeling actor should be just as intriguing, graceful and nuanced in movement as a walking actor and should have command of wheels in the same way that a dancer has command over his/her legs. In movement classes in graduate school, I did everything my cohorts did, from contact improvisation to cloud walks and tumbling. It was just slightly different. My wheelchair is part of my body, part of my acting instrument. So I have to be skilled in every aspect of its maneuvering. The same goes for the paralyzed parts of my body.

For Don John, the wheelchair shouldn’t just be conveyed as a piece of durable medical equipment; it is her vulnerability, her power, her tool, her ambulation, her weapon, her getaway vehicle, her scar, her salvation, her survivorship. I know audience members will probably leave remembering Don John as a wheeler, and I just hope that they also take away some smidge of these other facets and realize how nuanced and interesting a wheeling character can be.