is the principal sponsor of Team Shakespeare. measure for measure rendering: Costume Designer Virgil C. Johnson rendering: Costume Designer Virgil teacher handbook Barbara Gaines Criss Henderson Table of Contents Artistic Director Executive Director Preface . .1 Art That Lives . .2 Bard’s Bio . .2 The First Folio . .3 Shakespeare’s England . .4 The Renaissance Theater . .5 Chicago Shakespeare Theater is Chicago's professional theater Courtyard-style Theater . .6 dedicated to the works of William Shakespeare. Founded as Timelines . .8 Shakespeare Repertory in 1986, the company moved to its seven-story home on Navy Pier in 1999. In its Elizabethan-style William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure courtyard theater, 500 seats on three levels wrap around a deep Dramatis Personae . .10 thrust stage—with only nine rows separating the farthest seat from the stage. Chicago Shakespeare also features a flexible 180- The Story . .10 seat black box studio theater, a Teacher Resource Center, and a Act-by-Act Synopsis . .11 Shakespeare specialty bookstall. Something Borrowed, Something New . .12 In its first 17 seasons, the Theater has produced nearly the entire What’s in a Genre? . .14 Shakespeare canon: All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and 1604 and All That . .14 Cleopatra, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Cymbeline, To Have and To Hold? . .15 Hamlet, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and Playnotes:The Dark God and his Dark Angel . .16 3, Julius Caesar, King John, King Lear, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Macbeth, Playnotes: Between the Lines . .17 Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, What the Critics Say . .19 Othello, Pericles, Richard II, Richard III, The Taming of the Shrew, A Play Comes to Life The Tempest, Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Winter's Tale. A Look Back at Measure for Measure . .26 Shakespeare Revisited . .28 Each year Chicago Shakespeare receives widespread critical acclaim An Interview with the Director . .29 for artistic excellence and its accessible, creative approach to Shakespeare's work. Chicago's Jeff Awards year after year have hon- An Interview with the Costume Designer . .30 ored the Theater, including repeated awards for Best Production Classroom Activities and Best Director, the two highest honors in Chicago theater. Theater Warm-ups . .32 Since Chicago Shakespeare's founding, its programming for young Theater Exercises . .35 audiences has been an essential element in the realization of its Before You Read the Play . .36 mission. Team Shakespeare supports education in our schools, As You Read the Play . .39 where Shakespeare is part of every required curriculum. As a the- ater within a multicultural city, we are committed to bringing After You Read the Play . .50 Shakespeare to a young and ethnically diverse audience of 50,000 Preparing for the Performance . .52 students each year. Team Shakespeare's programming includes free Back in the Classroom . .52 teacher workshops, student matinees of mainstage shows, post- Techno-Shakespeare . .54 performance discussions, comprehensive teacher handbooks, and Suggested Readings . .57 an abridged, original production each year of one of the "curricu- lum plays." Team Shakespeare offers a region-wide forum for new Acknowledgments vision and enthusiasm for teaching Shakespeare in our schools. This Teacher Handbook grew out of a team effort of teachers The 2004–2005 Season offers a student matinee series for Chicago past and present, Chicago Shakespeare Theater artists and edu- Shakespeare Theater’s mainstage productions of The Merry Wives cators, and scholars, past and present. Chicago Shakespeare of Windsor, Measure for Measure, and Romeo and Juliet. This Theater gratefully acknowledges the work of Dr. Rex Gibson winter, Chicago Shakespeare presents especially for students a and the Cambridge School Shakespeare Series, and The Folger 75-minute abridged adaptation of The Comedy of Errors, at its Shakespeare Institute, whose contributions to the field of teach- theater on Navy Pier and on tour to schools and theaters across ing have helped shape our own ideas through the years. The the region. We hope that you and your students will enjoy our Teacher Handbook was designed by Kelly A. Lewis. work—and Shakespeare's creative genius brought to life on stage. ❈ Marilyn J. Halperin, Director of Education Roxanna Y. Conner, Team Shakespeare Manager Laura Bork, Education Associate © Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 2005 Kelly A. Lewis, Publications Manager EASURE FOR EASURE written by William Shakespeare Mdirected by Barbara Gaines hakespeare’s Measure for Measure takes us into a world where power is abused, laws distorted, and people live unprotected. In S this corrupt and seamy city of Shakespeare’s invention, human society has decayed. The energetic underworld refuses to be stifled, and remains a constant, sore reminder of human instinct that cannot be legislated away. It is an uncertain world, peopled by characters shut off from themselves and from one another. It is a lonely world, dominated by power. Contradictions surface. What is the relationship between individual liberty, self-restraint, and public law? Can a religious doctrine of mercy have any place in a secular doctrine of government and the administration of justice? Can the law live independent of the fallibil- ity of human beings who create and enforce it? How do we live a life based upon belief, and make room for others’ beliefs and needs? Shakespeare and his contemporaries could not have imagined the society in which, 400 years later, we now live. Yet the questions that Measure for Measure confronts us with are those that candidates, philosophers and pundits have spent this past year debating. They are questions that refuse to go away, and remain at the very center of a democratic society, always struggling with itself to be better. ❈ Virgil C.Rendering Designer Costume by Johnson ComEd is the official lighting design sponsor Kraft Foods is the Student performances of Measure for Measure at Chicago Shakespeare Theater are underwritten by of Chicago Shakespeare Theater. principal sponsor of Nuveen Investments, with additional support from American Airlines is the official airline Team Shakespeare. Sheila A. Penrose and R. Ernest Mahaffey. of Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Additional support for Team Shakespeare has been provided by: Alphawood Foundation, Aon Corporation, The Chicago Drama League, Citigroup Foundation, Arie and Ida Crown Memorial, The Beatrice P. Delany Charitable Trust, Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, GKN Foundation, Illinois Tool Works, J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation, Peoples Energy, The Albert Pick, Jr. Fund, Pittway Corporation Charitable Foundation, Polk Bros. Foundation, Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Foundation, Sage Foundation, Dr. Scholl Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Segal, and Stefani’s Childrens Foundation. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. Art That Lives rama, like no other art form, How can you help us give you the best Dis a living art. It is written to be performed live before a performance we can? group of people who form an audience and together experi- • Please don’t talk during the performance. Talking dis- ence a play. Ancient cave paint- tracts the actors as well as the people sitting nearby. ings depict men disguised as ani- • Respond naturally to our play. Emotions are part of mals. Since ancient times, impersonation and imitation drama. We hope that you’ll laugh, cry and even have served man in his effort to express himself and to gasp—but as a natural response to the story, and not communicate. The drama of western civilization has its in order to distract attention from the stage. roots in the ancient Greeks’ religious rituals and obser- vances. Until the Renaissance, when Shakespeare wrote, • Please keep all “noisemakers”—food, gum, personal drama was closely tied to religious beliefs and practice. stereos, etc.—back at school or on the bus! In a quiet theater, wrappers and munching are heard by Drama not only depicts human communication, it is all, the actors included. human communication. In theater, unlike television or film, there is a two-way communication that occurs • No photographs of any kind, please! Flashbulbs can between the actors and their audience. The audience make the actors lose their focus and can be danger- hears and sees the actors, and the actors hear and see ous. Digital cameras, along with all other kinds of the audience. We are used to thinking about the actors’ recording devices, are prohibited. roles in a play, but may find it strange to imagine our- selves, the audience, playing an important role in this liv- ing art. Because the art lives, each production is guaran- teed to be different, depending in part upon an audi- Bard’s Bio ence’s response. Live drama is the sharing of human he exact date of William experience, intensely and immediately, in the theater, TShakespeare’s birth is not which momentarily becomes our universe. known, but his baptism, tradition- ally three days after a child’s birth, A live theater production depends upon its audience. The was recorded on April 26, 1564. best performances depend upon the best actors—and the His father John Shakespeare was a best audiences. When the actors sense a responsive, inter- tanner, glover, grain dealer and ested audience, their work is at its best—full of animation town official of the thriving market town of Stratford- and energy. When the actors sense disinterest, they, too, upon-Avon. His mother Mary Arden was the daughter of are distracted, and the play they create is less interesting. a prosperous, educated farmer. Though the records are lost, Shakespeare undoubtedly attended Stratford’s One actor described the experience of live perform- grammar school, where he would have acquired some ance as a story told by the actors and audience togeth- knowledge of Latin and Greek and the classical writers.