Encorethe Performing Arta Magazine 2007 Spring Season
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I March 2007 2007 Spring Season MeIora Kuhn, C4/"pse, 2006 BAM 2007 Sprilll Season Is sponsond by: Bloomberg ENCOREThe Performing Arta Magazine 2007 Spring Season Brooklyn Academy of Music Alan H. Fishman William I. Campbell Chairman of the Board Vice Chairman of the Board Karen Brooks Hopkins Joseph V. Melillo President Executive Producer presents The Taming of the Shrew/ Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare Approximate BAM Howard Gilman Opera House running time The Taming of the Shrew: Mar 20,22,27 & 29 at 7:30pm; for each: Mar 17, 18,24,25,31 & April 1 at 2:30pm two hours and 40 Twelfth Night: Mar 17,18,21,23,24,25,28,30,31 & April 1 at 7:30pm minutes, including one The Watermill Theatre (UK) and The Old Vic productions intermission by Propeller Directed by Edward Hall Design by Michael Pavelka Lighting design by Mark Howland and Ben Ormerod (Shrew); Ben Ormerod (Twelfth Night) Music by Propeller Text adapted by Edward Hall and Roger Warren American stage manager R. Michael Blanco The Taming of the Shrew was presented as part of the RSC Complete Works Festival 2006. BAM 2007 Spring Season is sponsored by Bloomberg. The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night are part of Classics at BAM presented by Bank of America. Leadership support for BAM Theater is provided by Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Inc., The Shubert Foundation, Inc., The Norman & Rosita Winston Foundation, Inc. , The SHS Foundation, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Francena T. Harrison Foundation Trust, with major support from Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Rose M. Badgeley Residuary Charitable Trust; and additional support from British Council USA, Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater, and Billy Rose Foundation, Inc. Support for Twelfth Night is provided by David L. Klein, Jr. Foundation. IN:NYC® Card from American Express is the presenting sponsor for BAMfans young donors club. Casting THE TAMING OF THE SHREW CHR ISTOPHER SLY, a drunken tinker Dugald Bruce-Lockhart LUCENTIO, a young gentleman of Pisa Tam Williams TRANIO, Lucentio's servant Tony Bell BIONDELLO, Lucentio's servant Alasdair Craig BAPTISTA, a wealthy gentleman of Padua Bob Barrett KATH ERINE, Baptista's daughter Simon Scardifield BIANCA, Baptista 's daughter Jon Trenchard GREMIO, Bianca's suitor Chris Myles HORTENSIO, Bianca's suitor Jack Tarlton PETRUCHIO, from Verona Dugald Bruce-Lockhart GRUMIO, Petruchio's servant Jason Baughan CURTIS, Petruchio's servant Joe Flynn A PEDANT Jason Baughan THE TAILOR Dominic Tighe VI NCENTIO, Lucentio's father Chris Myles THE WIDOW Dominic Tighe UNDERSTUDY Tom McDonald Other parts played by members of the Company TWELFTH NIGHT FESTE Tony Bell ORSINO, Duke of Illyria Jack Tarlton CURIO, his servant Jon Trenchard VIO LA, later Cesario Tam Williams SEBASTIAN, her twin brother Joe Flynn CAPTAIN OF A SHIP Dominic Tighe OLIVIA Dugald Bruce-Lockhart MALVOLlO, her steward Bob Barrett SIR TOBY BELCH , her uncle Jason Baughan MARIA, her gentlewoman Chris Myles SIR ANDREW AGUCHEEK, suitor to Olivia Simon Scardifield ANTONIO, a sea captain Alasdair Craig A PRIEST Jon Trenchard ENSEMBLE/UNDERSTUDY Tom McDonald Other parts played by members of the Company The actors in The Taming of the Shrew/Twelfth Night appear with the spec ial permission of Actors' Equity Association . The American stage manager is a member of Actors' Equity Association. The Taming of the Shrew/Twelfth Night Production Team on Tour Associate director Tom Daley Lighting designer Mark Howland Tour company manager Anthony Field Tour production manager Jen Shepherd Deputy stage manager Jenefer Ta it Assistant stage manager Holly Handel Wardrobe mistress Carley Marsh For Watermill Productions by Propeller Executive director James Sargant Associate artistic directors John Doyle & Edward Hall Production manager Lawrence T. Doyle Tour co-ordinator Caro MacKay General manager Clare Lindsay Stage manager Rebecca Emery Assistant production manager Jen Shepherd Wardrobe supervisor Carley Marsh Outreach Ade Morris, Will Wollen Marketing Jan Ferrer , Steve Gibbs Administration Michele Tubman , Ellen McKevitt, Monique Thompson Production acknowledgements Set construction Laura Martin , Robert Knight Production photographer Ph ilip Tull & Manuel Harlan Chandelier by Howard Eaton Lighting Special thanks to Angie Kendall , The National Youth Music Theatre , Stage Electrics Tour sponsored by Coutts & Co. www.propeller.org.uk/ www.watermill.org.uk THE WATERMILL AND PROPELLER Jill Fraser MBE (April 15, 1946-February 10, 2006) became the Artistic and Executive Director of The Watermill Theatre in 1981. Her strength and vision made the theater what it is today. Ed Hall first worked at the Watermill in 1995 when he directed Othello at the invitation of Jill Fraser. Henry V in 1997 was the first time he worked with an all male company which subsequently became known as Propeller. Since then all Propeller productions have been produced and toured and transferred to London by the Watermill. The existence of a mill at Bagnor is recorded in the Domesday Book and the building has served as a corn mill and fulling mill for hundreds of years with its beautiful tithe barn alongside. It was converted into a theater in the early 1960s and the first professional season opened in 1967. In recent years the Watermill has progressed into the top league of British regional theater and many shows produced by the company have had their full potential realized by transferring to London, or touring throughout the UK or overseas-to more than 25 countries worldwide. The Taming of the Shrew/Twelfth Night The Taming of the Shrew is one of Shakespeare's earliest plays, probably written in 1590-1 or before. It interweaves three narratives. The principal one, the taming of a shrewish woman by violent means, was common in folklore and popular drama . The secondary story of Bianca and her various suitors derives from George Gascoigne's play Supposes ("Deceptions"), itself a version of a comedy by Ariosto. But these two plots are set inside a framework story in which a drunken tinker, Christopher Sly, is persuaded that he is in fact a lord. This, like the shrew-taming, has a long history, going back as far as The Arabian Nights, where the Caliph Haroun AI Raschid plays a similar trick on the drunken Abu Hassan. One version of the story is called The Waking Man's Dream , which usefully focuses Shakespeare's treatment. An especially interesting aspect of the play's presentation of Christopher Sly and his world is that Shakespeare is clearly drawing on his own earlier life and experiences, for the Sly scenes are full of very specific references to Warwickshire places and people. Sly says that he is "old Sly's son of Burton Heath," adding "Ask Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know me not. " Burton Heath is Barton-on-the-Heath , where Shakespeare's aunt Joan Lambert lived; parish registers reveal that there were Hackets living at Wincot, then a hamlet just south of Stratford, in 1591; Sly himself may allude to a Stephen Sly who lived in Stratford, also mentioned in the play; and in his recent book Will in the World Stephen Greenblatt makes the intriguing suggestion that the drunken Sly may owe something to Shakespeare's own father, once a pillar of Stratford society but fallen on hard times and taken to drink. However that may be , the Sly framework raises an interesting textual issue. The Taming of the Shrew was first published in the First Folio of Shakespeare's works, 1623. But in 1594 a play called The Taming of A Shrew had appeared. It was shorter and simpler than The Shrew, and most of the characters have different names. The relation between the two plays has been endlessly debated, and is still unresolved: which derives from the other, or do both derive from a common original? The main significance of A Shrew for modern performance is that, whereas in the Folio Sly disappears once the shrew-taming gets going, A Shrew contains episodes in which Sly comments on or intervenes in the action, and a final scene in which he awakes from his dream. It is likely that these reflect episodes that were originally written by Shakespeare but for whatever reason were not printed in the Folio text. The text for the present production, while largely based on the Folio, incorporates some lines from A Shrew, since the Sly framework is crucial to this interpretation of the play. The earliest surviving reference to Twelfth Night comes in the diary of John Manningham, a lawyer of the Middle Temple in London. On February 2, 1602, he says "At our feast, we had a play called Twelfth Night or What You Will, much like The Comedy of Errors or Menaechmi in Plautus, but most like and near to that in Italian called Inganni. A good practice in it to make the steward believe his lady widow was in love with him, by counterfeiting a letter as from his lady, in general terms telling him what she liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparel, etc. , and then when he came to practice, making him believe they took him to be mad. " Manningham identifies several possible origins of Shakespeare's main plot. There are various 16th - century Italian comedies called G/'Inganni ("The Mistakes") or Gl'lngannati ("The Deceived") which use the central situation in Twelfth Night: a girl disguised as a page is sent by her master whom she loves to woo another lady who then falls in love with the "page, " but so does Shakespeare's own earliest surviving play, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590 or earlier), and its principal source, the Diana of the Portuguese writer Jorge de Montemayor.