Production support is generously provided by Karon Bales & Charles Beall Support for the 2014 season of the Tom Patterson Theatre is generously provided by Richard Rooney & Laura Dinner i University of Waterloo on the world stage This is a place where imagination meets innovation — a place where unconventional approaches push performance to new heights and allow talent to soar. In the community and through research and teaching at our dynamic Faculty of Arts, University of Waterloo is a proud supporter of the arts. uwaterloo.ca UWaterloo Drama Scenes from an Execution by Howard Barker March 2012 WATERLOO | Canada’s most innovative university for 22 years C004608 University of Waterloo on the world stage This is a place where imagination meets innovation — a place where unconventional approaches push performance to new heights and allow talent to soar. In the community and through research and teaching at our dynamic Faculty of Arts, University of Waterloo is a proud supporter of the arts. uwaterloo.ca UWaterloo Drama Scenes from an Execution by Howard Barker March 2012 MINDS PUSHED TO THE EDGE In drama, the greater the conflict, the more riveting the result. This is the beauty of theatre: in a safe environment we watch titanic struggles and laugh or perhaps cry at the outcome. And along the way we gain a little bit of insight. In that light, I am excited to present a season of plays in which the characters are pushed to the very edge of their capabilities – and, in order to cope, must change or die. Metamorphosis, for instance, is at the very heart of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Events that could be tragic become the stuff of comedy. The opposite takes place in King Lear. The plays in the 2014 season give us extraordinary characters pushed to the edge by war, by desire, by family and, above all, by love. These characters are the most cherished embodiments of our journey as people. We may begin as Alice and in time become Helena, Christina, Cleopatra, Judith Bliss, Mother Courage, Bottom, Don Quixote or Lear. I hope today’s performance will inspire you to see some of the other productions WATERLOO | Canada’s most innovative university for 22 years on our 2014 playbill, and to further pursue the themes and ideas embodied in them through the many engaging and entertaining events of our Stratford Festival Forum. Videos on the season’s theme: C004608 Antoni Cimolino, Artistic Director stratfordfestival.ca/madness Our 2014 Partners and Sponsors We are honoured to acknowledge the following corporations and individuals who have made commitments in the 2014 season: Individual Partners Support for the 2014 Support for the 2014 Support for the 2014 Support for the 2014 season of the Festival season of the Avon season of the Tom season of the Studio Theatre is generously Theatre is generously Patterson Theatre is Theatre is generously provided by Claire & provided by the generously provided provided by the Daniel Bernstein Birmingham Family by Richard Rooney Parnassus Foundation, & Laura Dinner courtesy of Jane & Raphael Bernstein and Sandra & Jim Pitblado Corporate Partners Production and Program Sponsors Sylvanacre Properties Ltd. In-Kind Sponsors Stratford’s Greatest Hits 2 Season Hosts Performance Hosts Aylmer Express Blackburn Radio Comtran Famme & Co. Professional Corporation Pelee Island Winery Power Corporation of Canada Pratt & Whitney Canada Inc. Rhéo Thompson Candies Steed Standard Transport Limited The FSA Group The Woodbridge Company Limited The Stratford Festival gratefully acknowledges the generous support of these contributors to our success: Black CMYK The Stratford Festival is a non-profit organization with charitable status in Canada* and the U.S.** *Charitable registration number: 119200103 RR0002 **As defined by Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code Pantone 3 FORUM Expand your Experience Concerts, debates, talks, comedy, interactive presentations and more... May we recommend these selected Forum events . The Radical Middle Way SHAHIDSHAFIQ.COM BY: PHOTO Studio Theatre Saturday, July 26, from 10 to 11 a.m. Muhammad Robert Heft, an international consultant on counter-terrorism, brings together his personal and professional experience in a talk about conversion, radicalization and restoring moderation. $15. Apocrypha No More: Shakespeare’s Collaborative Plays Studio Theatre MUHAMMAD ROBERT HEFT Friday, August 15, from 9 a.m. to noon Scholars Eric Rasmussen and Will Sharpe join Festival company members to explore non-canonical plays believed to reveal Shakespeare’s hand. $15. Support for this event is generously provided by Dr. Jules and Josephine Harris. Table Talk Paul D. Fleck Marquee, Festival Theatre Tuesday, August 19, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. Buffet lunch followed by a talk on King John by Professor Ted McGee. $40 with cash bar. ERIC RASMUSSEN 4 Masks, Madness and Shakespeare’s Sonnets Studio Theatre Thursday, August 21; Saturday, August 30; Thursday, September 4, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Festival company members use character half- masks to explore the sonnets. Directed and compiled by celebrated director Guy Sprung and master mask teacher Brian Smith. $25. ARC Ensemble presents “The Hell Where Youth and Laughter Go” St. Andrew’s Church Saturday, August 30; Saturday, September 6; Saturday, September 13, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. This preeminent chamber music ensemble performs music born of the First World War, including Edward Elgar’s magnificent Quintet for piano and strings. The concert includes readings of poetry and letters of the time. $30. Night Music is generously supported by Sandra Rotman in honour of Louis Applebaum through The Louis Applebaum Visiting Artists Program. ARC ENSEMBLE Authorship on Trial Festival Theatre Saturday, October 4, from 10:30 a.m. to noon Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, of the Supreme Court of Canada, convenes a special panel of judges to consider whether there is sufficient evidence to refute the claim that Shakespeare was the principal author of the canon. With special appearances by Antoni Cimolino and Colm Feore. Free. CHIEF JUSTICE BEVERLEY MCLACHLIN 200+ Forum events • April to October 2014 stratfordfestival.ca/forum | 1.800.567.1600 Selected Forum Events Broadcast Partner Supported by Sustaining support for the Forum is generously provided by Kelly & Michael Meighen and the T.R. Meighen Foundation Support for the 2014 Forum is generously provided by Nandita & Julian Wise Support for Peer into the Playbill is provided in memory of Dr. W. Philip Hayman 5 PREMIER OPPORTUNITY TO LIVE STEPS FROM THE AVON RIVER AT THIRTY-SIX FRONT, STRATFOrd’S MOST EXCLUSIVE ADDRESS The “lack land” is, perhaps, more logical, and less unkind, than it might seem at first glance: John was the youngest of five sons, and thus not endowed with the promise of great landholdings that at least some of his older brothers would have expected to enjoy. “Soft sword” was meant as a more direct insult: John’s willingness to show fealty to Philip II of France soon after the former came to the English throne, which involved both the ceding of land and payment of money to Philip, led some to consider the new king weak. Either way, neither epithet is particularly auspicious. There is little question that John was one of the most colourful monarchs England has seen. He was reviled in his own time as both personally lustful and politically Tom McCamus (King John) weak; as king, he openly defied papal power (he was excommunicated for a period A Curiously of four years in the middle of his reign); he was forced into the signing of Magna Carta, Elusive King: now considered a fundamental document in the evolution of democracy (although a “I am a bit of a flop in John’s own time); and when scribbled form” he died, England was in the grip of civil war. Historians still debate his relative merits By Kel Pero or lack thereof, particularly in the areas of administration and law. Many European crowned heads and But for a fifth son, who should really noblemen of past centuries are now known have done little more than, say, form an to us largely via their nicknames. Some, alliance with a minor noble family through like Edward the Confessor or Philip the marriage or been shuffled off into the Handsome, might be pleased at the thought; Church, John’s profile is really rather others, like Pepin the Short or Charles impressive. He managed to outlive all four the Bald, might be less than flattered. In of his brothers, including the legendary the case of the Plantagenet King John of Richard the Lionheart, ruled England for England, not one but two epithets have seventeen years, and is a direct forebear of come down to us: he was known as both the current monarch, Elizabeth II. He is the John Lackland (a fairly literal translation of only English king of his name. Historically, the medieval French Johan sanz Terre) and John is, in many ways, an anomaly, a set of John Softsword. contradictions – a bit of a mystery. 7 Seana McKenna (Constance) Just as the monarch John occupies, in after Shakespeare’s death. No performance many ways, a rather odd place in history, of the play is recorded until more than a so Shakespeare’s play is unusual within century after that, in the late 1730s. the playwright’s canon. While many of The play’s origins have proven Shakespeare’s works have undergone contentious, at least among some scholars some degree of ebb and flow in popularity and enthusiasts. It is well established that over the centuries, King John, impressively Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, popular in the later part of the nineteenth Scotland, and Ireland, a popular work of century, ranked among Shakespeare’s least- British history whose second edition was frequently performed plays just decades issued in 1587, provided Shakespeare into the twentieth.