Program from the Production

Dear Friend, Table of Contents Sometimes Shakespeare asks STC Board of Trustees us to take a leap of faith. For Feature Article 6 our final mainstage show Board of Trustees W. Mike House Emeritus Trustees of the 2012-2013 Season, Michael R. Klein, Chair Jerry J. Jasinowski R. Robert Linowes*, Title Page 9 The Winter’s Tale, we leave Robert E. Falb, Vice Chair Norman D. Jemal Founding Chairman John Hill, Treasurer Jeffrey M. Kaplan James B. Adler About the Playwright 10 you with an intimate story of Pauline Schneider, Secretary Scott Kaufmann Heidi L. Berry* mistakes, hope and second Michael Kahn, Artistic Director Abbe D. Lowell David A. Brody* Synopsis 11 chances. This ambitious play Eleanor Merrill Melvin S. Cohen* Trustees Melissa A. Moss Ralph P. Davidson Cast 13 spans 16 years, two nations and more than one Nicholas W. Allard Robert S. Osborne James F. Fitzpatrick instance of possible divine intervention, yet at its Ashley M. Allen Stephen M. Ryan Dr. Sidney Harman* Cast Biographies 14 core, it speaks of trust and belief in other people. Stephen E. Allis George P. Stamas Lady Manning Rebecca Taichman, an STC Affiliated Artist who Anita M. Antenucci Bill Walton Kathleen Matthews Direction and Design Biographies 17 Jeffrey D. Bauman Lady Westmacott William F. McSweeny previously directed Cymbeline, Twelfth Night and Afsaneh Beschloss Rob Wilder V. Sue Molina About STC 20 The Taming of the Shrew here at the Shakespeare Landon Butler Suzanne S. Youngkin Walter Pincus Theatre Company, has found a way to incorporate Dr. Paul Carter Eden Rafshoon Support 22 Chelsea Clinton Ex-Officio Emily Malino Scheuer* all of these elements into one transformative story. Dr. Mark Epstein Chris Jennings, Lady Sheinwald For STC 30 Andrew C. Florance Managing Director Mrs. Louis Sullivan Rebecca has cast a first rate ensemble of actors Miles Gilburne Daniel W. Toohey STC Staff 34 to double—and sometimes triple—the parts in Barbara Harman Sarah Valente John R. Hauge Lady Wright Audience Services 35 this play. Every actor in this production straddles Stephen A. Hopkins the worlds of Sicilia and Bohemia and helps the Lawrence A. Hough * Deceased audience compare characters from both societies. Rebecca’s versatile group of actors includes STC favorites Nancy Robinette, Tom Story and Ted van Griethuysen, along with new faces such as Mark Harelik and Hannah Yelland. I look forward to excellent performances from the entire cast. STC has produced this play in association with our friends at the McCarter Theatre Center. We are STC’s Artistic Leadership Fund grateful to McCarter for help rehearsing, refining and supporting Rebecca’s vision. As you examine The Shakespeare Theatre Company is pleased to acknowledge its the set, costumes, sights and sounds of this Artistic Leadership Fund Members whose generosity provides production, remember that every decision in theatre sponsorship support for this production of The Winter’s Tale. is a leap of faith. If we believe in Shakespeare’s message and come together in the spirit of For more information on the Artistic Leadership Fund, please contact friendship, magic can happen in this very room. Amy Gardner, Associate Director of Development, 202.608.6332. • We hope to see you in our theatres again next Anonymous (4) Jeffrey M. Kaplan season. Anne and Ronald Abramson Michael R. Klein and Joan I. Fabry Nick and Marla Allard Mr. and Mrs. Robert P. Kogod Warm regards, Stephen E. Allis Abbe David Lowell and Molly A. Meegan Anita M. Antenucci Jacqueline B. Mars Beech Street Foundation Robert and Martha Osborne Afsaneh Beschloss Alan and Marsha Paller Mr. and Mrs. Landon Butler Stephen and Lisa Ryan Dr. Paul and Mrs. Rose Carter Vicki and Roger Sant Michael Kahn Dr. Mark Epstein and Ms. Amoretta Hoeber Clarice Smith Artistic Director Mr. and Mrs. Steven B. Epstein Fredda Sparks and Kent Montavon Shakespeare Theatre Company Ms. Stefanie Erkiletian George P. Stamas Mr. and Mrs. Robert Falb Sam Turner James A. Feldman and Natalie Wexler Bill Walton John and Meg Hauge Tom and Cathie Woteki HRH Foundation Suzanne and Glenn Youngkin Mr. and Mrs. Stephen A. Hopkins Nina Zolt and Miles Gilburne Cover photo by S. Christian Low. 2 • 3 a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Part of the 2013-2014 Season Book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim Originally Produced on Broadway by COMEDYHarold TONIGHT! S. Prince √Directed by Alan Paul 4 Subscribe Today! ShakespeareTheatre.org Call 202.547.1122, option 2 5 Doublings Shakespearean &Triplings Most scholars agree that the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Shakespeare’s company, had a core of about nine shareholding actors, with three additional musicians. Doubling roles Anonymous, The Dance of Death, Paris, 1486. was an essential fact of life, especially when the theatres were closed for plague, and actors were forced to tour the provinces with smaller ensembles. Toward the end of his career, however, Shakespeare began to use doubling in a new way. At other moments, characters appear to function as negative images of each other. His late plays, more than ever before, stretch the limits of theatrical illusion, and in them One scholar, Stephen Booth, argues that Shakespeare’s leading actor, Richard Burbage, doubling becomes a structural preoccupation rather than a professional necessity. Often played two contrasting roles in Cymbeline—the romantic lead Posthumus, as well as called “romances” for their defiance of genre, these plays are defined by oppositions. the grotesque villain Cloten. Similarly, in The Winter’s Tale the leading role of Leontes In them, the comic intermingles with the tragic, nature vies with art for supremacy and is paralleled by the anarchic Bohemian clown Autolycus. Whereas Leontes is possessed life is haunted by the specter of death. In The Winter’s Tale, the play is literally divided by paranoid delusions and searches for the truth, Autolycus possesses a frank view of into two worlds which mirror each other in ways large and small—the winter court of the world’s realities and is a master of lies. As far as I know, no major company has Sicilia and the springtime pastoral of Bohemia. Almost all of the characters have shadow ever attempted to double the two roles with one actor, making this production unique, selves in these other worlds, doppelgängers who suggest underlying symmetries and perhaps with the exception of Shakespeare’s own. contradictions. Of all the characters in The Winter’s Tale, there is only one who cannot be doubled. The theme in these plays is invariably of family and personal ties, the characters I speak of course of Hermione, who appears in the play, ironically, in three different forming a constellation of parents and children, husbands and wives. Sometimes two forms: as a living human being in Sicilia, as a ghost in Bohemia and as a statue at characters will appear to be twin manifestations of the same identity, such as Leontes play’s end. The question of how to understand Hermione’s true essence, of how to and Polixenes, the two kings of Sicilia and Bohemia. “They were trained together in their distinguish between reality and illusion, is one that has tormented thinkers since the childhoods,” Shakespeare writes, emphasizing the characters’ twinned natures, as well as time of Plato. “The poet,” Plato writes, “is thrice removed from the gods and the truth,” their deep bond of love. “Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made just as Hermione’s statue is one level removed from the truth of her human existence separation of their society,” Shakespeare continues, they “shook hands as over a vast, and and another from the divine truth of her ghost. Shakespeare asks us to reconcile three embraced as it were from the ends of opposed winds” (act 1, scene 1). In other words, impossibilities—that a character can be alive, dead and a work of art at the same time. though time and the responsibilities of life pull us apart from those we love, we will And yet, in dramatic practice, this apparent impossibility is really nothing of the sort. This always feel the deeply human need to connect. It is a theme Shakespeare will return to final scene of Shakespearean doubling is in fact a tripling which both echoes and rebuts in this play again and again, the savage breaches that life creates and the ways in which Plato’s writings. Nowhere else does Shakespeare so forcefully ask us to confront the we knit ourselves back together. phantasmal power of the theatre, the manner in which it can bridge that wide, unseen gap between the worlds of art (Hermione’s statue), nature (Hermione as queen) and the divine (Hermione’s ghost). At the end of The Winter’s Tale, Paulina says the statue will not move until all “awake their faith” (act 5, scene 3). She is speaking directly, not only to Leontes and the court of Sicilia onstage, but for those in the audience as well, those living the triple life along with the poet and his creations. It is a divine synthesis, a dream that is real, the kind of ending too impossible for real life and too real to ever be forgotten. Drew Lichtenberg, Literary Associate 6 7 Recipient of the 2012 Regional Theatre Tony Award® Artistic Director Michael Kahn Managing Director Chris Jennings in association with McCarter Theatre Center presents By William Shakespeare Performances Begin May 9, 2013 Opening Night May 14, 2013 Lansburgh Theatre Director Vocal Coach Rebecca Taichman Gillian Lane-Plescia Set Designer Head of Voice and Text Christine Jones Ellen O’Brien LAIB WAX ROOM Costume Designer Casting Director David Zinn Laura Stanczyk, CSA Visit the only beeswax chamber designed by Lighting Designer Resident Casting Director Wolfgang Laib for a museum.

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