Sometimes, if you're lucky, you can go back to a childhood vision and tie it up with a nice bow.
Playwright Karen Zacarias was 11 when she first read "Shane" and became enraptured by Jack Shaefer's western that was made into an iconic movie in 1953 and, later, a TV series. But what she imagined the characters looked like as she devoured the story of the mysterious lone rider was starkly different from what her teacher did or what Zacarias saw on screen.
"I thought of Shane as Roberto Clemente," Zacarias said of the groundbreaking Latino baseball star. "I'm a Mexican girl who had moved to Boston and this was about a family that had moved north in search of a better life. This was my story, too."
Nearly 40 years later, the Washington, D.C.-based Zacarias got an invitation from Cincinnati Playhouse leader Blake Robison to adapt "Shane" for the stage. She leapt at the chance.
"Blake said you can do it as you first imagined it," the 54-year-old Zacarias said. "So, it's an inclusive, celebratory examination of masculinity."
Also commissioned by the Guthrie Theater, her "Shane" premieres Friday in Minneapolis as a 90-minute one-act starring New York actor William DeMeritt in the title role. Zacarias reimagines the settler family the Starretts as Latinos and Shane as the son of enslaved Cubans.
