Support for the 2015 season Production support Corporate Sponsor of the Tom Patterson Theatre is generously provided for the 2015 season is generously provided by by M. Fainer of the Tom Patterson Richard Rooney & Laura Dinner Theatre 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 for an unforgettable time ALL THE WORLD’S Psychodrama at Sea A STAGE By Margaret Jane Kidnie Evan Buliung, Deborah Hay Pericles may be one of Shakespeare’s family in the closing moments of Twelfth lesser-known plays, but it includes Night, and the emotional vulnerability of one of the most moving scenes in the Lear – like Pericles, another now-wiser canon. Towards the end of the play, father – who embraces even prison the eponymous hero, a king who has with joy, so long as he remains with INDEED suffered the deaths, one after the other, Cordelia. Shortly after he confirms his of his wife and only daughter, falls into daughter’s identity, Pericles hears an a deep depression. No longer willing to other-worldly music that draws him into eat or even speak, Pericles is reduced a sleep – the others, unaware of any to a huddle of clothes on the stage. sound, depart the stage. The sudden His counsellors bring to him a virtuous appearance of Diana, the virgin goddess maid whose conversation, they hope, of fertility and childbirth, is typical of might help him survive his grief. Shakespeare’s preoccupation, late in As this nameless woman begins to his career, with divine intervention into talk to the king in private, telling him human affairs. The goddess descends Offi cial Newspaper of the Stratford Festival of her own losses and misfortunes, from the heavens to tell the sleeping Pericles slowly comes to recognize in Pericles to travel to Ephesus, and to tell her tale his own life story. Incredulous his story at her temple in front of her – perhaps even afraid to trust that this maiden priests, so setting the stage for girl who reveals to him her name is the play’s final moment of wonder. Marina might be his lost daughter – he Diana’s sudden appearance late in the calls his counsellors back on stage action comes not entirely as a surprise. and asks her to name her mother. “Is Characters appeal repeatedly to her it no more to be your daughter,” she agency, most notably when Pericles replies, “than / To say my mother’s name fears his wife’s death in childbirth during was Thaisa? / Thaisa was my mother, a storm at sea, and she provides their who did end / The minute I began.” travels and adventures with continual This longed-for reunion of father and spiritual oversight. Diana in some sense daughter brings with it the wonder of serves a similar narrative function to that Viola and Sebastian’s recovery of lost of Gower, the “author” character who 4 5 Stratford / Toronto Star Program Ad 2015_C.indd 1 15-03-13 9:28 AM Each of them, in his or her own DAVID MIRVISH PRESENTS way, guides the play away from THE 2015/16 MIRVISH THEATRE SUBSCRIPTION SERIES disaster and death towards ethical governance and the reproductive family, two ideas that in this play are closely linked. A GENTLEMAN’S Modern theatrical production frequently takes creative license in terms of visually reinterpreting & GUIDE TO the figure of Gower in such a way as to fashion a narrator Ladie’ who embodies traditions of story-telling quite removed from THEATREGOING: Shakespeare’s own literary heritage – a West Indian calypso singer, Welsh bard and Japanese ESSENTIAL SHOWS butoh dancer are just some of Gower’s more recent incarnations. 7 Kathryn Hunter’s 2005 Bankside Globe production in England Fo a Perfect reinvented Gower (played by Patrice Naiambana) as a West Theatre Season! African griot, a story-teller through GET READY, whose art a community is enabled ‘CAUSE HERE WE COME. GLASS SLIPPERS ARE SO BACK. to heal itself. MAIN This idea of communal health is at the heart of Pericles, and it is SEASON arguably only finally achieved in the closing scene at the temple 7 SHOWS of Diana. The play opens with disaster, as the hopeful Prince of ONE LOW PRICE US. RC A M Y JOAN B OS T ® K PHO THE TONY AWARD-WINNING MUSICAL R A L C Tyre discovers that the answer to 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 RAYMOND LUKE, J RAYMOND the riddle he must solve in order September / November 2015 December 2015 / January 2016 January / February 2016 Ed Mirvish Theatre Ed Mirvish Theatre Royal Alexandra Theatre Evan Buliung to win the hand of Antiochus’s daughter in marriage is “incest.” HHHHH This foundational trauma sets Pericles ‘THEATRICAL HEAVEN’ opens the play. John Gower comes to Sunday Telegraph ‘RUPERT EVERETT on a long journey, both literally at sea gives the performance of his career’ Pericles from the grave – historically, The Guardian he is the medieval author on whose and figuratively in terms of his own Confessio Amantis Shakespeare and his personal growth, and we follow him as collaborator, George Wilkins, probably he travels around the Mediterranean based their theatrical adaptation of a visiting the ancient cities of Antioch, story that was as old as it was popular Tarsus, Pentapolis, Mytilene and Ephesus. The “REJOICE. It is even more glorious than promised.” Judas Kiss “Thrilling! THE NEW YORK TIMES even when Gower retold it. Picking up a Unusually for the drama of this period, by David Hare The best musical of the year.” ‘Rupert Everett is magnificent as Oscar Wilde’ NEW YORK MAGAZINE Evening Standard device that Shakespeare used to such Pericles contains no subplot. The play’s good effect in Henry V, Shakespeare linear structure might at first seem to lack 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 and Wilkins stage Gower as a Chorus complexity, but its episodic shape serves figure who bridges the world of the to emphasise patterns of repetition. spectator and the world of the play. Diana Time and again, the action replays ideas Book Your Subscription Now! 416.593.4225 and Gower both occupy a privileged and situations involving fathers, dead position on the action, looking in on the wives, and daughters, the force of these MIRVISH.COM 1.800.771.3933 characters, as it were, from the outside. repetitions coming to speak to issues 7 that were at the heart of Jacobean trade, famine and human trafficking. Even political thought: What is it to be a good “good King Simonides,” the governor of father? What is it to be a good king? Pentapolis and father of the woman whom The Return Political theory is explored here through Pericles will marry, is head of a state in the individual, often-suffering, would-be which the one per cent rule over the to Wholeness ideal king.