Short Shakespeare! the Comedy of Errors 2020
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the comedy of errors Adriana, rendering by Ana Kuzmanic, 2005 Kuzmanic, Ana by rendering Adriana, TABLE OF CONTENTS Barbara Gaines Artistic Director INTRODUCTION Carl and Marilynn Thoma Chair Preface . 1 Living Art: Criss Henderson Creating Community in the Playhouse . 2 Executive Director Bard’s Bio . 3 The First Folio . 3 Shakespeare’s England . 4 “Renaissance” vs . “Early Modern” . 5 Chicago Shakespeare Theater is Chicago’s professional theater The Early Modern English Theater . 6 dedicated to the works of William Shakespeare . Founded as Courtyard-style Theater . 8 Shakespeare Repertory in 1986, the company moved to its seven- Timeline . 11 story home on Navy Pier in 1999 . In its Elizabethan-style courtyard theater, 500 seats on three levels wrap around a deep thrust stage, THE COMEDY OF ERRORS with only nine rows separating the farthest seat from the stage . Dramatis Personae . 13 Chicago Shakespeare also features a flexible 180-seat black box The Story . 14 studio theater, and a Teacher Resource Center . In 2017, a new, innovative performance venue, The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare, Act-by-Act Synopsis . 14 was built, expanding CST's campus to include three theaters . The Something Borrowed, Something New: year-round, flexible venue can be configured in a variety of shapes Shakespeare’s Sources . 17 and sizes with audience capacities ranging from 150 to 850, defining Seeking Another Drop: the audience–artist relationship to best serve each production . Now Identity in The Comedy of Errors . 18 in its thirty-third season, the Theater has produced nearly the entire From a Scholar’s Perspective: Shakespeare canon: All’s Well That Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, Seven Theories of Comedy . 20 As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Cymbeline, Edward III, Hamlet, What the Critics Say . 22 Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Henry VI Parts 1, 2, and 3, Henry VIII, A PLAY COMES TO LIFE Julius Caesar, King John, King Lear, Love’s Labor’s Lost, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of A Look Back at The Comedy of Errors Windsor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, in Production . 31 Othello, Pericles, Richard II, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming A Conversation with David H . Bell . 36 of the Shrew, The Tempest, Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, Art and America’s Great Depression . 41 Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Two Noble Kinsmen, On the Road: A Brief History of Touring . 43 and The Winter’s Tale . Chicago Shakespeare Theater was the 2008 recipient of the Regional Theatre Tony Award . Chicago’s Jeff Awards CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES & RESOURCES have honored the Theater year after year, including repeated awards Before You Read the Play . 47 for Best Production and Best Director, the two highest honors in As You Read the Play . 52 Chicago theater . Since Chicago Shakespeare’s founding, its After You Read the Play . 65 programming for young audiences has been an essential element in Preparing for the Performance . 68 the realization of its mission . Team Shakespeare supports education Back in the Classroom . 69 in our schools, where Shakespeare is part of every required Classroom Warm-ups . 70 curriculum . As a theater in a multicultural city, we are committed to bringing Shakespeare to life for tens of thousands of middle and high Community Builders . 72 school students each year . Team Shakespeare’s programming Techno-Shakespeare . 77 includes free teacher workshops, student matinees of main stage Appendices . 81 shows, post-performance discussions, comprehensive teacher handbooks, and an abridged, original production each year of one of This Teacher Handbook grew out of a team effort the “curriculum plays ”. Team Shakespeare offers a region-wide forum of teachers past and present, Chicago Shakespeare for new vision and enthusiasm for teaching Shakespeare in our Theater artists, interns, educators, and scholars . schools . The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, honored Chicago Shakespeare Theater gratefully that vision with the prestigious Shakespeare Steward Award, and as a acknowledges the groundbreaking and indelible recipient of the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award, work of Dr . Rex Gibson and the Cambridge School the department’s work in education was celebrated at the White Shakespeare Series, whose contributions to the House in 2014 . The 2019-20 Season offers student matinees for three field of teaching have helped shape our own work of Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s full-length productions: in the fall, through the years . David Seidler’s The King’s Speech directed by Michael Wilson; in the winter, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet directed by Artistic Director Marilyn J. Halperin, Director of Education Barbara Gaines; and in the spring, Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Ray and Judy McCaskey Chair adapted and directed by Daryl Cloran and conceived by the Bard on Jason Harrington, Education Outreach Manager the Beach Shakespeare Festival . Also this winter, a 75-minute abridged version of The Comedy of Errors will be performed for Maggie Suggett, Learning Programs Manager student and family audiences at the Theater on Navy Pier and will Sara B.T. Thiel, Public Humanities Manager then tour to Chicago Public Schools for the last two weeks of its two-month run . n ©2020, Chicago Shakespeare Theater SHAKESPEARE’S the Comedy of Errors “Error”—that worrisome word we try to avoid whenever humanly possible—came to us from the Romans’ word meaning “to go astray, to wander.” The Comedy of Errors is a comedy like no other Shakespeare wrote again. It is, without question, (unless we’re possibly in error…) his fastest, wackiest, dizziest play—the consequence of having not just one, but two sets of identical brothers, and all four completely clueless that their twins are in same town, at the same time, and causing total confusion. Remember the last time you realized that you were totally clueless? About a math problem you couldn’t solve. Or finding your way around a new school. Or maybe about somebody’s feelings for you. When we’re clueless—as we all inevitably are from time to time—we’re inclined, like the characters in Shakespeare’s Comedy, to wander. From place to place looking for family. Away from home looking for love. Maybe even toward people we think we know but really don’t. Shakespeare gets us to laugh at all those errors that they— and we sometimes—make. In fact, he makes us laugh a lot at them. So, welcome to the world of Shakespeare’s play, completely devoted to the comedy of human error! www 1 .chicagoshakes .com Introduction LIVING ART: CREATING How can you help us give you COMMUNITY IN the best performance we can? THE PLAYHOUSE • Please, no talking during the performance. [Theatrical performance] is It distracts the actors as well as the people essentially a sociable, communal sitting nearby. affair. This is important. To resist • Respond naturally to our play Emotions are this is, I think, to ruin one of the very important parts . part of drama . We hope that you'll laugh, cry, of the theatrical experience. Let the play and let the and even gasp—but as a natural response to fact that temporarily you are not your private self, but the story, and not in order to distract attention a member of a closely fused group, make it easy for from the stage . the performance to ‘take you out of yourself.’ This, I suggest, is the object of going to a play… to be • Please leave all “noisemakers”—food, gum, cell taken out of yourself, out of your ordinary life, away phones, smart watches, etc —back. at school or on from the ordinary world of everyday. the bus . In a quiet theater, wrappers, munching— —TYRONE GUTHRIE, 1962 and even a phone’s vibration—are heard by all, the actors included. As a living art, a play is performed for a group of Flashbulbs people who gather and, at each performance, create • No photographs of any kind, please. can make the actors lose their focus and can be a unique and singular audience, experiencing a story dangerous . Digital cameras, along with all other together as a community—just as you will soon at kinds of recording devices, are prohibited, as is Chicago Shakespeare Theater . Drama not only tells text-messaging . stories about human communication, it is human communication. Different from television or film, theater creates a two-way communication between the actors and their audience . You are not simply on the receiving Cristina Panfilio, who played Helena in Chicago end of this communication: the audience is also a Shakespeare’s recent production of A Midsummer participant . Here at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Night’s Dream, explained to students at a performance: you become part of the story . “I never find myself until the audience shows up.” Film and Broadway actor Jason Robards once said, “An During Shakespeare’s time, playhouses were gathering audience is really another performer in the play ”. We places for Londoners from all walks of life to experience are used to thinking about the actors’ roles in a play, but a story, together . Because most of Shakespeare’s plays may find it strange to imagine ourselves, the audience, were written to be performed outdoors in daylight, playing a role—and a leading one, at that . the actors and the audience could see each other . The audience was part of the performance—they didn’t sit in Because theater is art that lives and breathes, each a darkened theater as they typically do today . In Chicago performance is guaranteed to be unique—because Shakespeare’s Courtyard Theater, the actors and their each audience and what it brings is unique .