Hello Internet. It has been a wild time over here, and a week ago, we opened The Winter’s Tale, my first play as Artistic Director of Shakespeare by the Sea. It’s playing until August 3rd at the Bowring Park Amphitheatre.
My brain is absolute mush, but here are the director’s note and some pictures from dress rehearsal. I am so happy to have worked with such a brilliant set of humans (22 in the cast alone) to make this piece that’s so dear to my new-mama heart.
Kings trying their wives for adultery and treason is soooo 1536, isn’t it?
But rulers openly mistreating women and suffering no consequences seems very Right Now. Rulers throwing their own countries into turmoil to satisfy their own egos seems Right Now. Rulers who talk about how reasonable and just they are while simultaneously taking action to restrict the rights of their most vulnerable citizens seems Right Now.
It’s easy to recognize ourselves in Sicilia. It’s a suit-jacket world where women are equal, but scarce (which probably means they’re not equal). It’s a high-powered, boom-time society where everyone is watching everyone else. It’s easy to cast blame in this society. It’s easy to see the cracks made by prejudice.
But Winter’s Tale gives us another setting as well, literally called Bohemia: land of good times and good music. At first glance, it seems like a paradise. And it’s easy to recognize this society as well. It feels like the artistic counter-culture, the “everyone is welcome,” “we’re all a family here,” “flattened hierarchy” environment. But prejudice exists here as well; it just knows how to stay hidden until it explodes. And there really is no such thing as a flat hierarchy.
The Winter’s Tale is a story about a family in turmoil, and this summer we’ve set it in a society in (familiar) turmoil. It’s a story about progress, about hope, winter turning into spring. It has a happy ending… doesn’t it? A mostly-happy ending. But there is also deep, enduring loss. It isn’t clear, or simple, whether this is a comedy or a tragedy, but I submit that it is both. Hope, loss, prejudice and progress are all braided together, much as they are in our world.
Twelfth Night, directed by the fabulous Noah Sheppard, opens this weekend at Harbourside Park.
Both shows are $20 at the gate. The schedule and necessary information about rain calls are on the SBTS website and social media accounts.