'Ghost' director's tried-and-true method is to improvise

LENOX -- When the cast of Shakespeare & Company's "The Canterville Ghost'' breaks into Billy Ray Cyrus's "Achy Breaky Heart,'' complete with cowboy boots and hats, you may wonder what kind of time machine you've stepped into.

This is, after all, a stage adaptation of an Oscar Wilde short story originally set in 19th-century England, on a haunted estate bought by an American family.

"That's all true,'' agrees director Irina Brook, the daughter of legendary stage director Peter Brook and an award-winning director in her own right. "But for the stage, we have to find the theatricality of the story. When I started rehearsals, I tried to be true to the text and do a traditional adaptation, but around day eight, I threw it all out because the images in my head were all about a contemporary American family, a hypnotist, and Victorian music-hall acts, and the actors began improvising around that.''

In a rehearsal room, the five actors in "The Canterville Ghost'' are creating a scene for the production, whose world premiere starts previews tonight at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre. They all have costume pieces -- a hat, a scarf, a teacup -- to help define the characters, and with a suggestion from Brook, they're off, improvising dialogue that is sometimes hilarious, sometimes incomprehensible, but always high energy. At any given moment, Brook will stop them, consider a section and work through it, refining the details.

The process might be painstaking, but Brook keeps her troops motivated, encouraging them to go wild and let her worry about the shape. The only one in the room who's struggling is Anna Brownsted, whose job is to record the improvised dialogue she and Brook will polish for the script after rehearsal is over.

"Working like this is scary, but in the best way,'' says Brownsted. "I have no idea what we'll come up with when we sit down to write. Thank God I have the tape recorder, because the most inspired bits of dialogue are impossible to remember.''

Brook smiles at the suggestion that she's involved in some risky business. After growing up in England and France, where her father's productions were her playgrounds, she worked as an actress for a while before turning to directing in France, earning awards in both opera and theater for productions based in her style of organic adaptation. "I have a very clear vision, even though it looks like a mess in the beginning,'' she says. "It's all about refining and simplifying.''

Michael Hammond, associate artistic director at Shakespeare & Company and an actor in "Canterville Ghost,'' says that when he and founding artistic director Tina Packer met Brook, they felt an immediate connection. The troupe created the position of director-in-residence for Brook, who'll direct three plays over the next nine months. "We decided we'd better bring her on board or she might set up shop across the street,'' Hammond says.

But creating something on the fly is a departure for Shakespeare & Company, which has generally placed primary emphasis on a play's text. Hammond admits Brook's style has taken some getting used to.

"I was and was not prepared for her style of directing,'' Hammond says. "We usually expect directors to facilitate the actors' personal connection with the text. Here, the text emerges as we go. I had to let go of my expectations about how Irina would present the story, but I'm discovering there's another narrative she's creating along with Wilde's that has its own theatrical logic.''

Even the way Brook picked her first project with the company was unusual. "Michael told me to find something 'ghostly and spooky' for the fall slot,'' Brook says, "so I Googled 'ghostly' and 'spooky,' and 'The Canterville Ghost' was the first thing that came up. It was perfect. Wilde wrote the story like an actor, and the key to the piece is show business and all the actor-y flourishes the ghost uses to try to scare off the new homeowners.''

It may seem surprising that a director with such a pedigree would not head directly to New York when she ventured to the United States, but Brook says she chose the Berkshires because it supports her family and her work equally. "I can't differentiate my life from my work,'' says the mother of two, who has bought a home in the area. "I need to be in an environment where all the parts of my life can be linked.''

Through Nov. 9. Tickets: $36-$48. 413-637-3353, www.shakespeare.org.

Notes

"Kooza,'' Cirque du Soleil's latest circus show, has been extended through Oct. 19. Tickets for the extension go on sale Sunday: $38.50-$90. 800-678-5440, www.cirquedusoleil.com