Spring 2011 PSF Newsletter
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival Newsletter • Spring 2011 th The Camaraderie of their Company: Season A Panoramic Pageant By Geoff Gehman spiced up their spying scene, especially when they accidentally bumped heads under a For 19 seasons PSF has been a feast of basin. Hamlet enlightening entertainment. It’s been a place by William Shakespeare for daring performances, magnetic sets, and The Shakespearean sitcom is one of July 20 - August 7 lobby photographs so magnetic and daring, the Festival’s calling cards. Jim Helsinger’s they make you want the see the show you’ve first Malvolio, in a 1993 Twelfth Night, was just seen. It’s been a place, to quote founder a phlegmatic peacock who used his arms as Pride and Prejudice Fr. Gerard J. Schubert, OSFS, “to shed wor- Adapted by Jon Jory calipers to measure himself as a heroic statue. ries, to forget the world, to remember what Brad DePlanche’s Pseudolus ( from the novel by Jane Austen A Funny Thing the world can be.” Happened on the Way to the Forum, 2010) July 19 - August 7 was a four-alarm fire and a five-ring circus. One of the Festival’s early attrac- And who can forget Suzanne O’Donnell’s tions was watching soap opera stars earn Mistress Ford and Grace Gonglewski’s their Shakespearean stripes. In 1994 Mark Mistress Page making mincemeat out of John The Comedy of Errors LaMura, who played the drug-addicted by William Shakespeare Ahlin’s Falstaff as he struggled mightily to musician Mark Dalton on All My Children, imitate a painted portrait in last year’s very June 22 - July 17 jumped to Oberon, the gymnastic fairy king merry The Merry Wives of Windsor? That was in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He was farce straight out of or aggressively agile and charmingly cunning, I Love Lucy Three’s —although it’s more historically even when he hung upside down like a bat. Company South Pacific accurate to note that I Love Lucy and Three’s Book by Oscar Hammerstein II One of the Festival’s serial pleasures Company are straight out of The Merry Wives and Joshua Logan is the soap opera of married couples play- of Windsor. Music by Richard Rodgers ing married couples. In a 1995 Much Ado This year the Festival is offering a Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II About Nothing, LaMura’s Benedick battled 20th-anniversary gift of repertory, with June 15 - July 3 wits with a Beatrice performed by Elizabeth MacLellan, his real-life wife. Their intimacy continues on page 12 The Two Noble Kinsmen Majestic Vision • The Photography of Lee Butz by William Shakespeare A spectacular collection of PSF photography by Lee Butz in an exquisite hardbound book July 27 - August 7 The nature of theatre, like much of human enter- prise, is fleeting. The actors, directors, and designers Sleeping Beauty work for months to prepare for an audience. At the final by Michele L. Vacca dress rehearsal at PSF, Lee Butz arrives with his camera. Within 24 hours, his photos of the production will grace June 3 - August 6 the lobby, just as the first audience filters into the theatre. In celebration of Lee’s photography and the Festival’s 20th anniversary, Majestic Vision: The Shakespeare for Kids Photography of Lee Butz at the Pennsylvania by Erin Hurley Shakespeare Festival has been published in a limited run July 27 - August 6 and is now available. Three years in the making, the book contains hundreds of photographs that capture the ephemeral: 610.282.WILL the defining moment of a character, of a performance, of a play. This collector’s book can be purchased at pashakespeare.org pashakespeare.org or in the lobby this summer. Notes from the Producing Shakespeare Untamed Hamlet: When Thinking Makes It So The Two Noble Kinsmen • Schubert Theatre • July 27 – August 7 Artistic Director By Patrick Mulcahy Hamlet’s initially unintended quest for the More to the point, the play sits well for outer limits of insight, understanding, and me in that period because that century saw Directing Hamlet comes at a price. An extraordinary the scope of his own consciousness turns such an astonishing range of human and Expectations run high, especially mine, season requires an By Nicole Murray, PSF intern out to be more interesting to him and more social development: romanticism gave way THE CAST when approaching one of the supreme extraordinary effort. The important than revenge, which, by Act V, to realism, agrarian gave way to industrial. In Elizabethan England, actors in works of art in western culture. What’s a planning cycle for one of Ian becomes a by-product of his larger quest, but This was the age of Darwin, Marx, Lincoln Shakespeare’s company routinely performed 10 play to do, when, of all the written works our summer seasons is Bedford, only after the readiness is all. and the survival of the American Republic to 12 different plays during a two-week period— Theseus. The in history, it has had arguably the great- typically 12-15 months. “experiment,” Napoleon, etc.—all reflecting a stark contrast to modern schedules when the Duke of Athens, est influence on human thought, save the I don’t think Hamlet is passive, mel- For this season, we have he delays his mar- humankind’s quest for the outer boundar- same play is performed consecutively for weeks, Bible? The play has become so organic to been dreaming, plan- riage to Hippolyta to ancholy, or brooding. He’s not crazy; his ies of what we can know, understand, and Patrick Mulcahy even months. Shakespeare’s actors were expected our language, that one student, after seeing ning, and envisioning for attack Thebes, where psyche ultimately withstands the slings become. It aligns with the energy of the play. to perform new plays with no more than several a performance, said, “It’s so full of clichés.” three years. he captures Palamon and arrows, where Ophelia’s buckles. He The play is not romantic, but the thirst for days’ notice. Often, a play would not be repeated and Arcite. He orders a is heartbroken in the beginning, but he The play is about one of the greatest understanding parallels the romantic quest. In fall 2007, Lee Butz, Dennis Razze, for weeks. This rigorous performance schedule duel to resolve their dispute over Emilia. doesn’t stay in one place for long. questions of all: the nature and purpose of Also, the ghost story in the play reflects the and I began meeting to explore publishing left little time for the extended rehearsal process He spends most of the play in a life and death and the ache for a recon- Victorian interest in the preternatural. And, a high quality coffee table book of Lee’s that theatres employ today. wrestling match with himself, ciled and authentic relationship with of course, the costumes will look fabulous. magnificent photographs, taken at dress absent a more worthy adver- This summer, PSF is trying its hand at the Andrew Kane, Pirithous. both. “To be or not to be” rehearsals of every play PSF produced since Theseus’s closest friend For the scenic design, Elizabethan rehearsal method, bringing patrons refers, I think, less to suicide its inception in 1992. Questions of “if ” and and an Athenian general. we considered many options. one step closer to the excitement and spontane- or to sustaining life and more “how” evolved into “when,” and we began (We won’t give it away here.) ity an audience member may have experienced in to two complex alternatives. the process of reviewing more than 40,000 Common to all of the considered Shakespeare’s time. Hamlet explores the options images to select a few hundred for inclusion. design options was the notion As I write this, the book is on press. I can of either an evolving, growing PSF typically rehearses each production six of a universe, that has a “here” think of no better timing than the launch (if troubled) consciousness that days a week for three and a half weeks. After Thomas Kelley, Palamon. (where people live) and a “there” of our 20th season to release this beautiful benefits from some combina- about one week, actors are expected to be “off A prince of Thebes, cousin (the undiscovered country); a book, titled . tion of providence and inten- Majestic Vision book,” with their lines learned. to Arcite. He falls in love universe suitably mysterious that with Emilia, when he tional self-direction, which The title is derived from . Hamlet can and must engage The Tempest We believe Elizabethan actors memorized catches a glimpse of her comes with life, or an unpre- Ferdinand says, “This is a most majestic from his prison cell. in seeking to know its workings their lines and prepared their characters before dictable post-death eternity in vision,” in response to a singing trio of god- while those around him (lesser the first rehearsal, and then rehearsed any fights, which an intolerable experi- desses conjured by the magician Prospero. minds) seek to somehow fill this dances, and songs only days before the first per- ence of consciousness, beyond The book’s title reflects the magic revealed universe with their own defining formance. Thus, Shakespearean audiences prob- control but ever present, may in the pages within. It also signals the Spencer Plachy, Arcite. influence. ably experienced performances that felt as impro- be his sentence. “What dreams beginning rather than the culmination of a A price of Thebes and vised as rehearsed, likely to be brimming with cousin to Palamon. He also may come…” So the endgame Also a given: elemental and majestic vision for PSF.