Jane Petersen-Burfield & Family, Cecil & Linda Rorabeck, Barbara & John
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Production support is generously provided by Production Sponsor Jane Petersen-Burfield & Family, Cecil & Linda Rorabeck, Barbara & John Schubert and Catherine & David Wilkes Support for the 2014 season of the Festival Theatre is generously provided by Claire & Daniel Bernstein 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 . Forum Film Festival: Still Dreaming Studio Theatre | Saturday, June 28, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Retired artists in the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, NJ, and directors from New York’s Fiasco Theater work together to stage A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Directed by Hank Rogerson and Jilann Spitzmiller (2014). $15. Lear’s Shadow: Contemporary Reflections on Diagnoses, Abuses and Testamentary Capacity Studio Theatre | Saturday, July 19, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Does King Lear suffer from dementia? Are his daughters guilty of elder abuse? Drs. Mark Rapoport, Carole Cohen and Ken Shulman examine the play and its central character through the lens of their practice as geriatric psychiatrists. Presented in association with the Canadian Academy of Geriatric Psychiatry and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. $25. Lobby Talk: Sans Teeth, Sans Eyes Festival Theatre lobby | Thursday, July 24, from 11 a.m. to noon In this talk, Dr. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, psychologist and professor at UMassAmherst, explores the basis for ageism in Shakespeare’s writing and how people today defy these stereotypes. Free. Lobby Talk: Upon a Wheel of Fire Festival Theatre lobby | Thursday, July 31, from 11 a.m. to noon Dr. Vivian Rakoff, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and Len Rudner of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs consider King Lear. There may be no other play in the Shakespearean canon in which the gods are called upon so often yet are so absent. As chaos leaks into the universe, whose job is it to clean up the mess? Free. 4 PHOTO: MICHAEL LIONSTAR PHOTO: DR. MARK RAPOPORT DR. K. SONU GAIND CAMILLE PAGLIA Souls Under Pressure Studio Theatre | Sunday, August 17, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. “Where is the soul in Shakespeare?” Taking King Lear as their focus, Torrance Kirby and Paul Yachnin of McGill University ask what happens to the human spirit, in Shakespeare’s time and in ours, when people are pushed to the limits of endurance. Colm Feore joins the discussion, offering insights from an actor’s point of view. $25. “He’s Not Mad, He’s Madly Visionary!”: A Debate on Madness and Individuality Studio Theatre | Saturday, September 6, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Literature is rife with colourful characters whose behaviour pushes beyond societal norms. Join Canadian Psychiatric Association members Dr. K. Sonu Gaind, Dr. Susan Abbey and Dr. Richard O’Reilly for this lively debate exploring themes of sanity, mental illness and diagnosis, and societal expectation, based on selected characters from this season’s playbill. $25. Camille Paglia: The Dark Women of Shakespeare Studio Theatre | Saturday, September 20, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Notable feminist and social critic Camille Paglia speaks about Shakespeare and misogyny – what is it about the mystery and ambiguity of women that so frightens men both then and now? $25. 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 Colm Feore (King Lear) symbolizes his continuing authority and acts Measuring Love as a source of tension with his daughters. By Alexander Leggatt He had intended to settle with Cordelia: now he plans to shuttle back and forth between King Lear opens with Lear dividing his Goneril and Regan. Goneril protests at kingdom among his three daughters, having her housekeeping disrupted, and asking which of them loves him most; Regan leaves home rather than take her whoever makes the best speech gets father in. Measuring their love by how much the largest share, so much kingdom for they will cater to his needs, Lear asks if they so much love. Goneril and Regan make are really his daughters, and this drives virtually identical speeches, and get him to an ironic questioning of his own identical shares. This means – simple identity: “Does any here know me? This is arithmetic – that Cordelia’s share is now not Lear.” Beneath the irony is a real fear: set, even before she speaks. Lear as judge to his question, “Who is it that can tell me has already picked the winner. But he has who I am?” Lear’s truth-telling Fool replies, reckoned without Cordelia. She sees the “Lear’s shadow.” Elsewhere he is not even absurdity of measuring love by words, a shadow: “I am a fool, thou art nothing.” and refuses to play. Lear in return leaves That word nothing haunts the play. When her with nothing, not even her identity as in the first scene Lear asks Cordelia what his child: “we / Have no such daughter.” she can say to earn the largest share of Before long it is Lear’s own identity that the kingdom, she replies, “Nothing.” He is in question. Is he King or not? Though warns her, “Nothing will come of nothing,” he has given away his power and his and goes on to annihilate her. In a roughly revenue, he still expects to be obeyed, and parallel action, the Earl of Gloucester is his entourage of a hundred knights both tricked by his bastard son Edmund into 7 thinking his other son, Edgar, is plotting to surrenders to it. Madness in Shakespeare’s kill him, and denies Edgar as Lear denied time was seen as a kind of exile from Cordelia: “I never got him.” Edgar, reduced society.