The Question, October 15, 2012 - Jennifer H. Capraru on The Seventh Seal

Bergman on Stage
by Estelle Rosen

Acclaimed director Jennifer H. Capraru will direct Concordia University Department of Theatre’s presentation of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. As Artistic Director of Theatre Asylum, she also has extensive experience directing contemporary theatre for human rights.

What is it about Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal that attracted you to present it as a play? Particularly explain  your description of the Seventh Seal as "an interrogation into the nature of faith" and your comment about Bergman's intense questioning of what makes us human - in the face of strife - resonating today as much as it did in the 15th century.

It has been years that master artist Ingmar Bergman's  film The Seventh Seal and its story, with its powerful and universal characters, have haunted me.

Bergman's cinema is intrinsically linked to his work as a stage director, which he never left throughout his 60-year career. His ensemble of theatre actors graces his films, and his use of language, composition and blocking are all richly informed by his long life in the theatre. He had faith in the theatre, where, unlike in film, one does not "work all day for three minutes of result," as he put it.