Artist Spotlight: Tyler Dobrowsky

Part of the beauty of theatre is that it is a collaboration of so many people and their unique jobs.  Although we may not think or realize all of these things that are involved, they’re important to recognize when we can.  I recently saw Caesar at Philadelphia Theatre Company, which was Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar edited down to 95 minutes.  This edit was done by the incredible Tyler Dobrowsky.

In the three years I’ve been running Zoe Writes Theatre, I’ve never really had the chance to talk to someone who has done something like this, so I really wanted to talk to Tyler about it.  Everything he had to say about this job he had and his relationship with Caesar was so interesting, and I really loved getting to ask these questions of him.  Caesar was such a success, and a lot of that credit goes to the magic Tyler worked on the script.

This play was definitely something special.  The heart and soul behind it started with Tyler, and I think his love for it was woven throughout the entire show.  You definitely have to have that in a situation like this.  He knew what he was doing, in all aspects of this show, from the original play to what we were treated to on stage…and it was exciting for me to get to talk to someone from an aspect of theatre that I’ve never gotten to talk to before!

What was the most important thing for you to keep in mind when you were cutting and editing the original Julius Caesar script?

Hmmm…hard to say just one thing! If I could pick two ideas that felt important to me, it would be 1) providing opportunities for technology and “media narration” to keep the story contemporary (and to keep it moving at a brisk pace) and then 2) that in this story, there aren’t any heroes, or villains, and we should really try and keep the audience guessing about who they should root for, if anybody. 

How did you make something as complicated as Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar into something palatable?

Ha, honestly, I think Caesar is a little more simple than some of his other plays – unlike, say, Midsummer, or Winter’s Tale, or Tempest, where you have a number of different narrative threads (an “A” plot and a romantic “B” plot and then a “C” plot with the clowns, basically), Caesar – while it has a lot of characters and the ending gets a little complex – basically follows Brutus, Cassius, and Antony the whole time, so focusing just on those characters was relatively easy, up to a point! Shakespeare’s act 5 is pretty complicated – Cassius thinks Brutus dies and then kills himself, but Brutus is actually still alive; Antony and Octavius think they have captured Brutus but it turns out to be a completely different character named Cato, who the audience has just met; Brutus ends the play with three other soldiers that don’t appear anywhere else in the entire play, so you’re kind of like, “Wait who are THESE people?”, etc. 

But once I made the decision that Brutus would be the one to assist Cassius in his death, everything became much simpler. 

Were you aiming for a certain time frame for Caesar, or did it just fall nicely at 95 minutes?

Great question! I was definitely hoping to get it to 90-100 minutes. I did an initial cut that was RUTHLESS that ran about 65 minutes. We did a reading of that in September, and when it clocked in at just over an hour I knew I had some room to go back in and add some text here and there. Morgan also asked if we could have a scene with Caesar and Antony, since their relationship isn’t super clear (both in my cut and in the OG Shakespeare), so I basically made a scene where Caesar and Antony talk to each other, cobbling it together out of little snippets the two of them have throughout the play, and then giving Antony some of Calpurnia’s lines as well. I think that worked really well. 

And then I wanted to give some room at the end for the dance/war choreography, so I made that language very spare. 

I was delighted it came in right at 95 minutes! I wasn’t sure what it would run, exactly, but very happy it all worked out. I don’t know what else I would have cut honestly. 

What was it like using a mix of both modern aspects like cell phones and videos and ancient aspects, like daggers and Roman baths?

That was a little more Morgan’s suggestion – she wanted to make sure that the piece felt eternal, because the themes and ideas in the play (about ambition, about power, about politics) were true 2000 years ago when Caesar was alive, they were true when Shakespeare wrote the play 400 years ago, and they are true now in 2026. So capturing that essence of timelessness felt important to her. And I agree! I think it gives the play some real power. When she came to me and said, “If we start in the bath house, they can be wearing towels like togas and people will think it’s like in Roman times,” I thought that was brilliant..and then just last week RFK Jr and a few other Trump appointees put out a video of them working out in a sauna! Just incredible coincidence. 

How did it feel for you, personally, to take on a project like this?  What is your connection to Julius Caesar in particular?

I’ve directed Caesar twice before, and really fell in love with it. The first time was with some high school students, and then the second time was a professional production at Trinity Rep, my former home theater in Providence, RI. That was definitely a “normal” production, in that it had the usual amount of actors (probably like 12 or 13?) and it was two and a half hours long. And then I did a 45 minute adaptation of the piece for a theater down in Florida, Asolo Rep, so they could tour it to high schools and the show could fit into a regular class period. And that adaptation was successful. So I knew the play could handle some severe cuts and still maintain its integrity. Doing it with only four actors was a challenge, but one I really came to relish. 

And given everything that’s happening in the US politically, I thought the timing was right for something both political and classical like Caesar. We didn’t want to say, “Caesar is Trump” or anything like that, but it felt right and good to do a play like this right now. Every day in rehearsal we’d look at the news and say, “Well, that’s the play.” 

What’s up next?

PTC is working on the world premiere of Wilderness Generation by James Ijames! That goes into rehearsals in two weeks, and opens the beginning of April. And then we have a few shows ready for next season, which we can’t wait to announce, so stay tuned!

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Tyler Dobrowsky is certainly a master when it comes to such a delicate job like this.  His love of what he does is inspiring, as is his love for PTC!  Caesar was such a delight to watch, and it couldn’t have happened without Tyler taking on this project.  I’m so glad I got the chance to share some of his insights and ideas to this.