• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Production Sponsor Support for the 2015 season of Production support is the Festival Theatre is generously generously provided by provided by Claire & Daniel Bernstein Larry & Sally Rayner UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Shakespeare lived in an age of rapid DISCOVERY: change, a time of new worlds, new beliefs and scientific discoveries. THAT EUREKA In short, he lived in an age very on the much like our own. But in that early modern age, change was MOMENT especially unsettling, overturning world stage societal foundations and leading to “We know what we revolution. In our own time we have This is a place where imagination are, but know not not only become inured to change, meets innovation — where we welcome it to the point where it is unconventional approaches push what we may be.” our new faith. performance to new heights and — Hamlet And so for the 2015 season I wanted allow talent to soar. to explore plays that especially Through research, teaching and examine discovery. In these plays, public engagement, University characters learn surprising truths of Waterloo is a proud supporter about the world around them or of culture and community. perhaps about themselves. In that eureka moment, their lives change forever. How do they deal with From Solitary to Solidarity: that change? At what cost comes Unravelling the Ligatures of Ashley Smith knowledge? Since Adam and Eve, March 2014 these questions have been at University of Waterloo Drama Faculty of Arts the centre of the human narrative. In 2015, through our playbill and in more than 200 Forum events, we will celebrate the power of the newest god in our pantheon – Discovery. Antoni Cimolino Artistic Director WATERLOO | Canada’s most innovative university uwaterloo.ca/stratford15 C007477 Our 2015 Partners and Sponsors We are honoured to acknowledge the following corporations and individuals who have made commitments in the 2015 season: Individual Theatre Partners Season Hosts Performance Hosts Support for the 2015 Support for the 2015 Support for the 2015 Support for the 2015 Burgundy Asset Management Inc. 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 Famme & Co. Professional Corporation provided by Claire & provided by the generously provided provided by Sandra & Highstreet Asset Management Daniel Bernstein Birmingham Family by Richard Rooney Jim Pitblado & Laura Dinner Intact Insurance Jarislowsky Fraser Corporate Theatre Partner Pelee Island Winery BMO Financial Group, Corporate Sponsor for the 2015 season of the Tom Patterson Theatre Pratt & Whitney Canada Inc. Steed Standard Transport Limited Corporate Partners Sylvanacre Properties Ltd. University of Waterloo Stratford Campus The Woodbridge Company Limited The Stratford Festival gratefully acknowledges the generous support of these contributors to our success: Production and Program Sponsors an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario In-Kind Sponsors 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 2 3 and her three ladies puts this vow to for an unforgettablean immediate test.time The “Promethean fire” of the ladies’ eyes ignites the men’s passion. The four lords turn their minds away from study to devising entertainments for the ladies, thereby supplying the usual fun of comedy. However, the nobles ALL THE play so hard, hunting, masquing, bantering, that they can hardly be said to get down to the real pursuit of comedy: finding a mate. This ebullient frivolity was what inspired Peter Brook to choose WORLD’STORONTO Watteauesque costumes for his 1946 production, which sealed the play’s modern reputation for theatrical mastery. STAR The lords’ light overthrowing of A STAGE their pledge convinces the ladies that their romantic overtures cannot be earnest either. The lords’ integrity PICK UP thus needs to be tested, something that usually happens in the course of a Shakespearean comedy but here is launched at the conclusion. INDEEDFROM The ladies set them year-long challenges before they will consider committing themselves to what the Learning Princess calls “a world-without-end SOUND OF bargain” – marriage. The witty hero, to Love Berowne, sums it up: “Our wooing doth not end like an old play; / Jack By Philippa Sheppard hath not Jill.” Berowne, who is most MUSIC wedded to his own wit, is given the toughest quest of all: to cheer Offi cial Newspaper of the Stratford Festival the ill in a hospital. Shakespeare’s convention-breaking here can be Costume sketch for Katherine by Patrick Clark partly explained by the fact that this Early in his career, Shakespeare boldly play is the first half of a duo; the second broke all the rules. From the title onwards, half, Love’s Labour’s Won, has been lost Love’s Labour’s Lost overturns our to time. expectations of comedy. The King of Love’s Labour’s Lost is almost unrivalled Navarre opens the play vowing with his for its verbal panache. The comedy is a friends to study for three years, abjuring “great feast of languages,” as the pageboy food, sleep, and the company of women in Moth observes. Shakespeare learned order to win fame. This monastic oath is at from John Lyly, a courtly playwright, the war with comedy, with its inexorable drive symmetrical patterning of characters towards procreation and festivity. The and an elaborate style full of conceits. sudden arrival of the Princess of France The stylized nature of the coupling, the 4 5 Stratford / Toronto Star Program Ad 2015_C.indd 1 15-03-13 9:28 AM no one understands him – he loses DAVID MIRVISH PRESENTS the communication battle, just as THE 2015/16 MIRVISH THEATRE SUBSCRIPTION SERIES the Spanish ships after whom he is named were likewise defeated. Holofernes, the pedant (his name stolen from Rabelais), uses language A GENTLEMAN’S expansively, at worst diminishing and alienating the simple Constable Dull. Costard, the fool, though not & GUIDE TO educated like these other two, wields language creatively, and is Ladie’ honest about his human desires: “Such is the simplicity of man to THEATREGOING: hearken after the flesh.” Berowne MIRVISH and his beloved Rosaline anticipate Beatrice and Benedick from Much ESSENTIAL SHOWS Ado About Nothing in their merry war of words. 7 Berowne excels in the art of rhetoric, and so would likely have Fo a Perfect enchanted the original audience of courtiers and lawyers. He is Theatre Season! particularly persuasive in arguing GET READY, that no dry book study could teach ‘CAUSE HERE WE COME. GLASS SLIPPERS PICK UPARE SO BACK. the young lords as much as falling MAIN in love: “Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible / Than are the tender SEASON horns of cockled snails.… And FROM when Love speaks, the voice of all 7 SHOWS the gods / Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.” He rationalizes ONE LOW PRICE US. RC A M Y JOAN B OS T ® K PHO THE TONY AWARD-WINNING MUSICAL R A L C that their creativity never flowed FROM THE CREATORS OF LL E ES. RR ECCL EW YAN TE YAN R R SOUTH PACIFIC & THE SOUND OF MUSIC ND A Y B . AND B R OS T PHO R HE T O ALL SOUND LUKE, J RAYMOND OF as easily as when they fell for the September / November 2015 December 2015 / January 2016 January / February 2016 Ed Mirvish Theatre Ed Mirvish Theatre Royal Alexandra Theatre ladies from France. Most of the characters deploy HHHHH ‘THEATRICAL HEAVEN’ Costume sketch for language competitively, vying for Sunday Telegraph ‘RUPERT EVERETT MUSIC Don Adriano de Armado admiration or “fame,” as the King gives the performance of his career’ The Guardian by Patrick Clark phrased it in the oath. These verbal pyrotechnics explode in a hilarious coming together and moving apart of the eavesdropping scene in which each of the effervescent flirtations, recalls a formal young lords reveals himself in a poem to dance, which makes Kenneth Branagh’s his lady’s praise. Three of the poems are The “REJOICE. It is even more glorious than promised.” Judas Kiss “Thrilling! THE NEW YORK TIMES decision to adapt it for the screen as a sonnets, and the sonnet was the height by David Hare The best musical of the year.” ‘Rupert Everett is magnificent as Oscar Wilde’ NEW YORK MAGAZINE Evening Standard musical (in 2000) so apt. of fashion when Shakespeare wrote the It is their wit, or lack thereof, that play; we see echoes of his Dark Lady in March / April 2016 April / May 2016 May / June 2016 Begins July 2016 Royal Alexandra Theatre Princess of Wales Theatre Royal Alexandra Theatre Princess of Wales Theatre defines each of this play’s characters. his depiction of Rosaline. Berowne itemizes the types, borrowed Rosaline, however, remains from commedia dell’arte: “the pedant, unimpressed by fine words. Berowne Book Your Subscription Now! 416.593.4225 the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool, swears he will change his tune: and the boy.” Armado, the braggart, “henceforth my wooing mind shall be MIRVISH.COM 1.800.771.3933 employs language so pretentiously that expressed / In russet yeas and honest 7 kersey noes. / And to begin: wench – so razor’s edge invisible.” Is Shakespeare God help me, law! – / My love to thee warning his own audience to exercise is sound, sans crack or flaw.” Rosaline, more charity? Love Beyond recognizing his irrepressible intellectual Shakespeare closes this play that pride surfacing again, retorts, “Sans ‘sans,’ crackles with repartee and Latin flourishes Words I pray you.” with two simple songs, about spring and Director’s notes by John Caird This exchange illuminates one of the winter.

Load more

  17

Copy Link