Character Questions with Zachary Johnson
Tell the story of the play from Casca's perspective:
Well, on the day of the Lupercal, Caesar and all us guys that follow him around go to see the race. Some soothsayer tried to warn Caesar of some nonsense about the ides of March, which we promptly ignored and moved on. While we are there, the most ridiculous spectacle of all time occurs when Mark Antony tries to give a crown to Caesar, three times, which he refuses, which pleases the crowd to no end. I, on the other hand, being not so fond of dictators, am absolutely pissed. The only thing I can manage to find amusing about the whole ordeal is the fact that Caesar passed out in the middle of the whole thing. Luckily for me, I had my trusty flask handy, which I began to make short work of to stop myself just murdering Antony and Caesar on the spot. The theatrics cease and Brutus and Cassius, who were suddenly best friends without any apparent reason, ask me all about the ceremony. I lay out the entire scene, from the crown being offered to the crowd going wild to Caesar passing out and coming to again. I tried to have a good time with the story, but couldn't really keep from wanting to rant about how Caesar should die. In the end, I composed myself and gave the gentlemen information on Marullus and Flavius being put to silence by Caesar. I departed after agreeing to meet with Cassius at another time, and finished my booze. About then, things got weird.
I'm walking through this storm that night, and I see some crazy things. A strangely non-confrontational lion, a servant with fire coming from his hands, and packs of women screaming about burning men. I ran into Cicero, told him about those things, and then ran into a deranged Cassius. Cassius, it turned out, was best buddies with Brutus to get him on board for an assassination attempt on Caesar. Not being a wuss or a slave, I joined in on the plot and Cassius, Cinna, Trebonius, Decius Brutus, Metellus Cimber and myself went to convince Brutus.
Convincing him was not hard. When we showed up to his house, Brutus was already on board, but just wanted to lay down ground rules for the thing.
1. Let's meet up at 8.
2. Let's try to stab him in like a dignified way. (Sure, pal, we'll do that.)
3. No stabbing Mark Antony.
4. Don't give away the plan beforehand by acting like a murderous fool, Casca. (This should have been said to Cinna as well)
So, that third rule gave me quite a bit of pause, but by that point in this long day, I was too shocked and hammered to really speak up during the planning session. We went on with the plan, and Decius convinced Caesar we would be giving him a crown that day in March. We all meet him and exchange a couple of last good chuckles before out senate meeting, and then go have a drink. At the meeting, the plan goes into motion with Metellus pleading to have his brother unbanished, a thing with zero chance of success. Everybody takes turns trying in their own way to sway Caesar on the issue until I pretty much get tired of the theatricality of the whole thing and just stab him. I feel I made the right choice, because everybody shut up then and we actually did what we were there to do instead of playing around talking about it. So, spoiler alert, Caesar doesn't make it, and we all have a good time watching Antony mourn him after (well, at least Cinna and I do).
However, Cinna and I decide to bail on the entire situation and get out of town when Brutus decides it would be a smart idea to let Antony speak at Caesar's funeral. We plan to leave slaves as doppelgangers of ourselves in Rome and flee to the Alps. Cinna's doppelganger is beaten to death in the streets, whereas mine is enlisted in Cassius' army and purportedly committed suicide after their defeat at Phillipi. The history books can say what they want, we succeeded in killing a "god" that day, and got out of it with no on-stage death!
What was the last role you played with Pigeon Creek? Would they beat up Casca in a fight?
The last full show I did with PC was Tempest, where I was Caliban. Strangely enough, he is another dull, surly character who has a tendency to hate some dude that is always bossing him around. In this case, I would have to say Casca wins the fight. Caliban may have some odd animal-like fighting moves, but he just isn't trained to fight at all. Also, Casca actually does manage to succeed in his assassination attempt. And, finally, Casca can hold his liquor much better than Caliban. If it were a bar room brawl, Caliban would hardly be able to see Casca, let alone fight him.
