a publication of the shakespeare theatre company asideswelcome to the final two plays of the...

The Merchant of Venice

ASIDES2010|2011 SEASON • Issue 5

A publication of the Shakespeare Theatre Company

ALSO INSIDE:

DOUBLE ISSUE

Ethan McSweeny closes the season with

Nobel Prize winning playwright Harold Pinter’s

Old Timescomes to STC

Also featuring...

FELA! The Broadway Musical

Free For All

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The Mistiness of the Pastby Susan Hollis Merritt

STC’s 25th Anniversary

FELA!, Krapp’s Last Tape and Petrushka

Harold Pinter, In His Own Words

Memory Playby Akiva Fox

Old Times Cast Old Times Artistic Team

Holly Twyford Takes a Pauseby Tim Treanor

An Interview with Michael Kahn and Ethan McSweeny

Commerce and Controversyby Akiva Fox

The Ideal Production

The Merchant of Venice: Comedy or Conundrumby John W. Mahon

The Merchant of Venice Cast and Artistic Team

Calendars

Remembering Sidney Harman

Harman EventsHappenings at the Harman

Free For All

ShakesPEERS: New Neighborhoods, New Focusby Emily Townsend

The Merchants of Magic and the Bard Association

Audience Services

Camp Shakespeare

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Dear Friend,

Welcome to the final two plays of the 2010-2011 Season: Harold Pinter’s Old Times and William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. It is very important to me that the Shakespeare Theatre Company produce both plays that we consider modern classics and well-known plays that have

endured for centuries. This will be the first time that STC has produced a Pinter play, though I have loved Old Times for many years. We have not staged The Merchant of Venice in more than a decade, and I am confident that Ethan McSweeny’s production will be a powerful and memorable close to this season.

We continue to look ahead to our 25th Anniversary Season, which will begin with Free For All. Our generous Friends of Free For All make this much-loved Washington tradition of free Shakespeare possible. Please consider joining them to show your support and to enjoy special benefits like premium reserved seating for Julius Caesar.

As I hope you have heard, we recently announced several special anniversary shows as well. This fall we will host the first stop of the North American tour of the award-winning Broadway musical FELA! We will also welcome Oscar-nominated actor John Hurt for a limited number of performances of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape from the Gate Theatre in Dublin. We continue to plan the two previously announced performances that will be performed in concert-style staging as part of The Bard’s Broadway as well.

I hope to see you in our theatres for many of these performances, both this season and next.

Best,

Michael KahnArtistic Director, Shakespeare Theatre Company

Dear Friend,

It is hard to believe that the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s very successful 2010-2011 Season is nearing its close. We hope you will join us for this season’s final offerings, including the Happenings at the Harman series which spotlights a variety of performers in the Washington,

D.C., area. We also continue to present high-definition screenings of great works from around the world: The Importance of Being Earnest from Roundabout Theatre Company and The Cherry Orchard from the National Theatre in London.

STC will remain committed to partnering with other local arts organizations in our 25th Anniversary Season and beyond. This September we will once again host the Fall Arts Preview at Sidney Harman Hall as part of the 19th Annual Arts of Foot Festival. More than 25 presentations on two of our stages will showcase the wealth of world-class theatre, dance, music and performing arts offerings in our community.

We are additionally thrilled to have announced three new presentations that continue our efforts to bring amazing theatre from around the globe to D.C.: FELA! in its first run in the U.S. since its Broadway engagement; Krapp’s Last Tape with John Hurt’s acclaimed solo turn; and Petrushka as part of a festival highlighting the unique puppetry of Basil Twist.

Please mark your calendar for these events. We hope you will join us and continue to support STC’s work to present the very best of performing arts.

Sincerely,

Chris JenningsManaging Director, Shakespeare Theatre Company

A publication of the Shakespeare Theatre Company

ASIDES Artistic Director

Michael Kahn

Managing DirectorChris Jennings

Director of Marketingand Communications

Darby Lunceford

Communications Manager Diane Metzger

PublicistLindsay Tolar

Marketing and Communications Intern

Lauren McGrath

Senior Graphic DesignerRicardo Alvarez

Associate Graphic DesignerNicole Geldart

Graphic Design InternRaphael Davison

Contributing WritersAkiva Fox

John W. MahonNoreen Major

Susan Hollis MerrittEmily Townsend

Tim Treanor

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Cover photo of Holly Twyford by Scott Suchman. Photo of Ngaujah and Nicole

de Weever in FELA! by Monique Carboni. Free For All photo by Kevin Allen.

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Critics have observed that time, particularly memory of past time, is central to Pinter’s work. Pinter’s biographer Michael Billington has remarked that “Memory is almost the key to Pinter’s whole work as an artist.” In Harold Pinter Billington observes that “the omnipresent power of memory is the defining theme of [Pinter’s] plays”:

Pinter’s characters live as much in the past as in the present, and are haunted by a recollection, however fallible, manipulative or imaginary, of some lost and vanished world in which everything was secure, certain, fixed. [...] Memory is what gives his work its strong emotional undertow. It also, in an age of historical amnesia, motivates a lot of his political thinking.

Dubbed by critics one of Pinter’s “memory plays,” Old Times focuses on how the past encroaches on what happens in the present and affects what may happen in the future. “Thematically,” Martin Esslin pointed out, Pinter explored “the operation of

memory: the way in which the passage of time changes our perception of what the past was like and what we were like—who we were—in that past.” Dramatic complications arise from his characters’ disparate, conflicting, and fallible memories of romantic love and

sex, often deployed as weapons in battles waged on the shifting turf, the “quicksand,” of time.

Sir Peter Hall, the first director of Old Times in London and New York, has written: “I believe that Pinter is essentially a poetic dramatist. He and Beckett have brought metaphor

“Mr. Pinter’s ability to load simple sentences with highly charged psychological freight is amazing. Even single words can become time bombs.” Frank Rich, The New York Times (1984)

W H AT C R I T I C S S AY

The Mistiness of the Pastby Susan Hollis Merritt

Rehearsal photo of Steven Culp, Tracy Lynn Middendorf and Holly Twyford by Raphael Davison.

4 Read about The Merchant of Venice starting on page 16.

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Photos of Pat Caroll by Joan Marcus, Michael Hayden by Scott Suchman, Christian Conn by Scott Suchman, Stacy Keach by Liz Lauren, Miriam Silverman by Scott Suchman, Jean Stapleton and Marin Hinkle by Richard Anderson, Patrick Stewart and Patrice Johnson by Carol Rosegg and Lauren Molina by Liz Lauren.

Eugene O’Neill’s

Strange Interludedirected by Michael Kahn March 27–April 29, 2012

Carlo Goldoni’s

the Servant of Two Mastersdirected by Christopher Bayes

May 15–July 1, 2012

William Shakespeare’s

the Merry Wivesof Windsor

directed by Stephen RayneJune 12–July 15, 2012


the Two Gentlemen of Verona

directed by PJ PaparelliJanuary 17–March 4, 2012


Much Ado About Nothingdirected by Ethan McSweeny

November 25, 2011–January 1, 2012

Jean-François Regnard’s

the Heir Apparentadapted by David Ives

directed by Michael KahnSeptember 6–October 23, 2011

WORLDPREMIERE

The 2011-2012 Season is a great milestone for STC.

Join us as we commemorate 25 years of classical

theatre! This celebratory season is filled with

excitement: a world premiere, charming comedies,

a modern classic and world-class presentations.

2 0 1 1 –2 0 1 2ANNIVERSARY

back to the theatre, where Eliot and Auden failed.” Pinter’s eclectic “poetic” imagery relating to time and memory forms confluences, like rivers joining together, intersecting and (to shift the metaphor to a photographic/cinematic one) supplying him with filters for his own life experiences (biographical sources documented in Billington’s Harold Pinter and in Antonia Fraser’s Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter). Such confluences also inspired innovative and cinematic uses of time in his plays: flashbacks, flash-forwards, freezes, tableaux vivants, montages, jump cuts, voice overs, echoes, and various amalgams of these dramatic techniques.

In Pinter’s “memory plays” one hears reverberations of the opening lines of T.S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton,” the first of his Four Quartets (1935):

Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past.

Pinter echoed Eliot’s imagery during his “conversation” with Mel Gussow about Old Times, in December 1971, when he and Peter Hall worked in rehearsals with a new cast, as they readied the play for its first New York production. Agreeing that “the past” had become “much more of an artistic concern” for him by then, Pinter observed: “I think I’m more conscious of a kind of everpresent quality in life. [...] I certainly feel more and more that the past is not past, that it never was past. It’s present. [...] I know the future is simply going to be the same thing. It’ll never end. You carry all the states

with you until the end.” Embarking on “the most difficult task” of his life, Pinter would spend the next year, in collaboration with film director Joseph Losey, adapting Marcel Proust’s massive novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) into The

Proust Screenplay (1972); later he and director Di Trevis adapted his screenplay to the stage as Remembrance of Things Past (2000). As Billington noted, Proust’s “ideas about time, memory and the importance of art in many ways coincided with [Pinter’s] own.”

“What interests me a great deal is the mistiness of the past,” Pinter told Gussow, echoing also the imagery of John Webster, who was, along with William Shakespeare and Cyril Tourneur, one of Pinter’s favorite Elizabethan/Jacobean playwrights. Characters’ “misty” reminiscences about the past (“old times”) —“The memory of all that” (a line from George and Ira Gershwin’s popular romantic tune “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” sung by Deeley during his second-act dueling duet with Anna)—are ultimately unverifiable in Pinter’s plays, just as memories often are in life. The past becomes embattled territory, as memories of “time past” take place in “time present.” As Kate, Deeley, and Anna “remember” old times, their vying reconstructions of the past occupy present time and space on stage. Pinter told Gussow, “It happens. It all happens.”

Anna’s and Kate’s “shared” past experiences—whatever they may have been —encroach on Kate’s present life with Deeley, even though Anna’s and Deeley’s pasts may or may not ever have intersected. In a cinematic jump

W H AT C R I T I C S S AY

“Old Times contains many menacingly funny lines…tender identities, vindictive feelings and physical humor.”

Mark Pizzato, Theatre Journal (1996)

For tickets cal l 202.547.1122 or visit ShakespeareTheatre.org.

“There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.”

Harold Pinter

Photo of the 2004 production of Old Times from the Donmar Warehouse, London, by Ivan Kynci. 7

Production Support has been provided by the

Artistic Leadership Fund

cut, when Anna suddenly “appears” as her “figure” turns and enters the action, she becomes the “intruder” (recalling Pinter’s earlier “comedies of menace”). Her entrance marks a cataclysmic moment in Kate’s and Deeley’s marriage. Like an earthquake, Anna’s visit figuratively exposes faults, weaknesses in their relationship. But she also serves as a catalyst for possible future change.

Pinter considered Old Times “structurally the most satisfying work” he had done by that time. At the end Deeley (re)enacts in the present the scene that Anna describes in Act One, imaged in the play’s initial tableau: the man “slumped” in the armchair 20 years earlier. As he sobs, Deeley is experiencing his comeuppance; he has become “odd man out.” His final heartbreak results from recognizing catastrophic fault lines in his marriage to Kate, its past and current instability; its foundation in a past “reality” not at

all what he has assumed all these years, but rather “a quicksand” in which they have been sinking, drowning, suffocating, and out of which Kate may pull only herself at the play’s end. When the “Lights” come “up full sharply,” that “Very bright” light provides a final moment of reckoning and recognition. That “highly ambiguous” denouement leaves important matters unresolved for Pinter’s audiences. We must contemplate that final tableau “sharply”—in Pinter’s words (to Gussow), “as clearly as possible, and without a kind of falsity which is sentimentality.” In “light” of our misty “memory of all that”—our own “old times,” we may find dramatic “truths” about our own lives and relationships in times present and future.

Susan Hollis Merritt is the author of Pinter in Play: Critical Strategies and The Plays of Harold Pinter and the Bibliographical Editor of The Pinter Review.

The Artistic Leadership Fund recognizes generous STC supporters of $25,000 or

more for the vital role they play in our artistic program, through expanded access to

the production process.

Prepare, I say. I thank you, gracious lords,For all your fair endeavors;

Love’s Labor’s Lost, act 5, scene 2

For more information, visit ShakespeareTheatre.org or call 202.547.1122

PRESENTS

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Basil Twist’s Petrushka

John Hurt in

Krapp’sLast Tapefrom Ireland’s Gate Theatre

Photo of Sahr Ngaujah in FELA! by Monique Carboni. Photo of John Hurt in the Gate Theatre’s production of Krapp’s Last Tape by Anthony Woods. Petrushka photo by Richard Termine.

8

10 Read about The Merchant of Venice starting on page 16.Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

In December 1971, theatre critic Mel Gussow interviewed Harold Pinter about his new play Old Times. The following is an excerpt of the interview, from Gussow’s Conversations with Pinter.

Mel Gussow: Who’s Harold Pinter?

Harold Pinter: He’s not me. He’s someone else’s creation. It’s very curious. Quite often when people shake me warmly by the hand and say they’re pleased to meet me, I have very mixed feelings—because I’m not quite sure who it is they think they’re meeting. In fact, who they are meeting at all. I can’t explain it very well. I sometimes feel in others an awful kind of respect which distresses me.

MG: That must be off-putting.

HP: Yes, it is.

MG: What do they expect? A proper phrase or a certain kind of appearance?

HP: Some people are very surprised. The fact that one of my main obsessions in life is the game of cricket—I play and watch and read about it all the time—that apparently surprises people. It’s a normal, healthy activity. I think I’m making a little bit of a meal of all this really. Life is quite tolerable. I have three main interests, I suppose. I live with my family very, very closely. A pretty tight life we have, which is very good. And, of course, I enjoy very much working in the theatre, and in films for that matter. And then cricket.

MG: Is that an equal third?

HP: Oh, yes. An equal third.

MG: Is there any order of precedence?

HP: Well, I don’t think I’d ever be at all happy if I were parted from my family. In fact, this little trip is the longest I’ve been away from them for a very long time. For example, I could never direct a play again in New York because I’d have to be here, and I don’t like being away from home too long.

MG: Unless your wife is in the play and you bring your son here.

HP: No, it’s too late. We did that with The Caretaker, but he’s nearly 14 and he’s at school. He couldn’t possibly leave London.

MG: Is there a fourth part of your life, a lower fourth?

HP: [Pause.] I’m a drinker. I like to drink Scotch, and wine, etc., etc., etc. And I’m surely not uncommon, by no means a rare example of the human race, when I say that I like sex and I like thinking about sex, too.

_____________

MG: How long did it take for the first draft of Old Times?

HP: About three days.

MG: The second draft?

HP: That took a few months.

MG: When you finished, did you have the play read to you?

HP: I read the play aloud to myself, so I know if it’s playable. I walk the characters through. I move them about. I play all the parts.

MG: Does anybody watch?

HP: I’m also the audience.

MG: Do you laugh?

HP: I laugh during the writing, sometimes.

MG: Does the title come first?

HP: No.

MG: Last?

HP: Yes.

MG: Any working title while you were writing?

HP: There was, yes. A silly one. In the play Anna talks about the cafes we found where artists and writers and sometimes actors collected, and “others with dancers.” And I couldn’t get the phrase “and others with dancers” out of my mind. I did actually put “Others with Dancers,” and thought, no, no, that’s not it at all. No, I was very pleased about the title when it eventually came. It did strike me as accurate.

MG: I think it really sums it up. Actually all your titles have been very apt.

HP: Well, thanks. It’s very important for me…

Harold Pinter,In His Own Words

COMING NEXT SEASON

JOIN US!As part of our 25th Anniversary Season, celebrate Shakespeare

through song and dance with two musical interpretations performed

in concert-style staging.

The Boys from Syracusemusic by Richard Rodgerslyrics by Lorenz Hartbook by George Abbottconcert adaptation by David Ivesdirected by Alan PaulNovember 4–6, 2011

Two Gentlemen of Verona(a rock opera)music by Galt MacDermotlyrics by John Guarebook by John Guare and Mel ShapiroJanuary 27–29, 2012

TheBard’s

Broadway

For details202.547.1122

ShakespeareTheatre.org

Upcoming Events forOld Times

Open Rehearsal Tuesday, May 10Seating at 7:30 p.m.Lansburgh Theatre*

Windows Sunday, May 22 at 5 p.m. The Forum in Sidney Harman Hall*

Engage in a lively discussion with local scholars and the artistic staff.

Post-Performance Discussion Wednesday, May 25, after the performanceLansburgh Theatre*

Ask questions of the acting company.

Classics in Context Saturday, June 11 at 5 p.m. The Forum in Sidney Harman Hall*

Learn about the social and cultural context of our plays during this roundtable discussion. Reservations not required.

*Seating for all events is based on availability on a first-come, first-served basis.

FREE

FREE

FREE

FREE

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers.

Michael KahnDirector

Walt SpanglerSet Designer

Jane GreenwoodCostume Designer

Scott ZielinskiLighting Designer

Martin DesjardinsSound Designer

Laura StanczykCasting Director

Daniel RehbehnResident Casting Director

Ellen O’BrienVoice and Dialect Coach

Beth Ellen Spencer*Stage Manager

Elizabeth Clewley*Assistant Stage Manager

ARTISTIC TEAM

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is too much information available.” Pinter drew on his own fractured memory in writing the play, recalling details of his own life as a young man in London 20 years before. He even sent a copy of Old Times to the woman he had dated then, along with a note that read: “this will ring bells.”

Pinter claimed that he wrote the first draft of Old Times in only three days, with the words flying out of him. His second draft, however, took many months in the winter of 1970, as he honed the language and the characters to their essentials. The play finally premiered in London in June of 1971, in a production directed by Pinter’s frequent collaborator Peter Hall and featuring Pinter’s wife Vivien Merchant in the pivotal role of Anna; an acclaimed Broadway run followed with a new cast later that year. This Pinter reached audiences in a new way: not with terror, but with the universal mystery of the human memory.

OLD TIMES CAST

STEVEN CULP*DEELEY

HOLLY TWYFORD*ANNA

TRACY LYNN MIDDENDORF*KATE


Memory Play by Akiva Fox

When Harold Pinter wrote Old Times in 1970, he was already 13 years into a singular playwriting career. In plays like The Birthday Party, The Caretaker and his masterpiece The Homecoming, he had unearthed the menace buried beneath domestic life. His writing sounded like no other English playwright, as its spare utterances and potent pauses only hinted at underlying terror. He was more a child of Samuel Beckett than of Noël Coward (though the latter, surprisingly, wrote him a fan letter).

But by the late 1960s, Pinter was beginning to explore new territory. He became fascinated above all with what he called “the mistiness of the past”—the ways in which memory proves shifting and unreliable. He wrote two one-act plays, Landscape and Silence, in which characters try to remember meaningful episodes from their past. And he wrote the screenplay for The Go-Between, based on L.P. Hartley’s novel about an old man recalling the tumultuous events of his youth. The

novel’s famous opening line—“the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”—might be the motto of Pinter’s writing during this period. Shortly after writing Old Times, Pinter would go on to adapt Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, one of the greatest works ever written on the peculiar nature of memory.

In Old Times, Pinter set out to turn the past into a battlefield, with competitors fighting over whose memory will win out. The play tells the story of Deeley and Kate, a couple who host Kate’s former roommate Anna for dinner. As the evening goes on, Deeley and Anna present their very different memories of Kate. Through snippets of songs, funny stories and half-remembered conflicts, they each lay claim to her. Multiple versions of the same events overlap; the play is dazzling “not because of the lack of information provided, as was the case with some of his earlier works,” writes the scholar Steven H. Gale, “but because there

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers.

Michael KahnDirector

Walt SpanglerSet Designer

Jane GreenwoodCostume Designer

Scott ZielinskiLighting Designer

Martin DesjardinsSound Designer

Laura Stanczyk, CSACasting Director


Ellen O’BrienVoice and Dialect Coach

Beth Ellen Spencer*Stage Manager

Elizabeth Clewley*Assistant Stage Manager

ARTISTIC TEAM

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TT: Tell us a little bit about Anna. In an interview with Joel Markowitz you said that to be able to play a character you have to fall in love with her, you have to “find the love in the scene.” Have you found something about Anna to love?

HT: Oh, there’s so much. I love her—I mean, she’s got a great wit, and she’s clearly got love of life, and I love the way she tells a story. If you’re going to get into a character, it’s not that hard to find the love in there somewhere. Even the real baddies. It was a professor of mine from college who told us to find the love in the scene. I’ll never forget it and it’s served me well. Because I think that’s where truthfulness comes from. If you comment, and judge your character, you’re not coming at it from the right way, also, if you’re concerned about how your character is going to be perceived, then you’re also not coming at it the right way.

TT: Is there anything about Anna which sets her apart from the other characters you’ve played?

HT: I think one of the things that struck me was her stillness. And I’m interested in exploring that more as an actor…I usually play characters that are very expressive. I’m thinking back to Diane in The Little Dog Laughed (Signature Theatre). She had a loud way of moving through

the world. And Bella in Lost in Yonkers (Theater J) had a certain energy. And so, I’m really interested in exploring the opposite of that, with Anna, because I think it would be interesting for me as an actor. What I can turn off.

TT: You’ve appeared in virtually every theater in Washington. But this will be the first time working with the Shakespeare Theatre Company. So what about this play or this production drew you to STC?

HT: To have Michael Kahn call you on the phone is rather flattering. So that’s how it began. And then when I read the play, it was a no-brainer. There’s something amazing about Pinter. There’s something magic about his words and his rhythms, his rhythms especially. You know, the joke of Pinter is about the Pinter pauses, and the key to the pauses is that they are sometimes as full as the words. And I’m fascinated to explore that. There are so many factors but sometimes you read a play, and you think, “I gotta do that.”

Tim Treanor is the senior reviewer for DC Theatre Scene (DCTheatreScene.com) and has written more than 350 reviews of Washington-area professional theatre productions over

the past six years. He is a member of the American Theater Critics Association. By day, he’s a trial lawyer for a federal agency.

Left photo of Holly Twyford and Tracy Lynn Middendorf in rehearsal for Old Times by Raphael Davison. Above photo of Holly Twyford from The Carpetbagger’s Children by T. Charles Erickson and courtesy of Ford’s Theatre.Read about The Merchant of Venice starting on page 16.

Holly Twyford Takes a Pause by Tim Treanor

14

She could probably have her name legally changed to “Helen Hayes Nominated Holly Twyford” without offending accuracy, though it would probably look awkward on the program. She has 16 nominations (she’s won four times), including for last year’s Orestes: A Tragic Romp, and she has played everything from Juliet to a tap-dancing pig. Now, for the first time,

she’s gracing a Shakespeare Theatre Company production—as Anna, the enigmatic visitor in Harold Pinter’s Old Times. I asked her how she’s going to do it—and why.

Tim Treanor: What is there about acting that compels people to do it despite the financial challenges?

Holly Twyford: The benefit is it’s an opportunity to get back to your imagination, an opportunity to explore somebody else’s world and leave yours at the stage door. There is something about these characters who are larger than life, and whose problems are larger than life. And whose joys are larger than life, also. So I think I must walk away from that having learned something. And if somebody in the audience can see that and maybe see a little bit of him or herself, that’s another kind of payoff.

17

MK: One of the great things about Pinter plays is that they are always a mystery—who means what, and what’s the subtext. In this play, the desire for ownership or possession of somebody is very strong. But the way these characters try to own the other characters is through memories. What you remember, or what you say happened, whether it did or not, is a way of fixing that person as your possession. Memories are weapons, and that fascinates me.

EM: Do you think we ever know which version is true?

MK: I’m very reluctant to say what I think the play means because Harold Pinter was very, very careful never to do so. There’s a reason why playwrights who are actually very smart, like Harold Pinter and Edward Albee, don’t explain ambiguous plays, because they want the audience to figure it out for themselves. I mean, we all have our theories about the play. For me, I find the play very clear. But I don’t want to tell the audience what I think it’s about. I hope they’ll get an idea.

EM: What I found when I directed it was we had to agree to disagree about what actually had happened, because all of us had our own narrative. And the audience, after the play is over, has only its memory to go back to and put the pieces together. So you get stuck in the same situation as the characters.

MK: I did the play 30 years ago, and the audience was always intrigued. I mean, this is one of Pinter’s most successful plays. We’re doing it because there’s a responsibility for the Shakespeare Theatre Company to say we believe these modern plays will be classics. And I think this play is definitely a 20th century classic, in the same way that A Streetcar

Named Desire is, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I’ve always thought that there is a direct line from the Shakespeare of Much Ado About Nothing to Oscar Wilde to Noël Coward to Pinter. There is a kind of black comedy and economy of language that runs through these masters.

EM: What’s your strategy for the Pinter pause?

MK: You have to decide what they mean. They can’t be artificial. And Pinter used to always say this is a one pause, this is a two pause, but that’s not how you act it. I think they get filled with a thought or an activity. I don’t think everything stops.

EM: No. [Laughs]

MK: I mean, we have pauses in life and things don’t stop. But I think he’d say there’s rhythm, an emotional rhythm, and once you find what the internal logic is, the pauses are pretty inexorable.

EM: It’s almost a musical notation in a way.

MK: Exactly. When I do an opera and there’s a pause or a rest, I know it’s there for a reason. Something has happened. It’s totally fun to work it out in rehearsal. For me, it’s 30 years later, I’m a different person, I understand relationships in a more mature way and I’m looking forward to rediscovering a play that I loved then, and that I fell totally in love with again when I reread it.

EM: It’s my favorite play of Pinter’s and I cannot wait to see your production of it.

MK: I can’t wait to go into rehearsal so I can see how it turns out. Now let’s talk about your return to STC.

Photo of Ethan McSweeny by Scott Suchman. Photo of Michael Kahn by Kevin Allen.16

Ethan McSweeny: So, Old Times. I reread it yesterday, and it was such a pleasure to read it again. I directed it in the George Street Playhouse in 2001.

Michael Kahn: I didn’t know that.

EM: Yeah, Lisa Harrow and Dee Hoty as Anna and Kate respectively, and Sam Tsoutsouvas as Deeley. I don’t know why David Saint let me do it; it was my first year there as his Associate Artistic Director. But the critics loved it.

MK: That’s funny. I bet Sam was very good.

EM: Yeah, he was. He has a sort of bulldog quality that I really like. And Deeley is interesting. I mean, he has these jealousies, and his masculinity is challenged by both of those women, isn’t it?

MK: Right. One of Pinter’s largest themes is power in relationships. In this play it’s watching a man who’s completely sure of his position with women, but discovering that not everything is what he thinks it is. I think it’s a wonderful play, the language is amazing, all of the stories and the metaphors that he uses are all absolutely perfect. Plus, it’s very funny. Did you find it funny?

EM: I found it hysterical.

STC Artistic Director Michael Kahn and director Ethan McSweeny (Ion, Major Barbara, The Persians) sat down during a break between auditions in New York City to discuss their upcoming productions.

Directors, Directions, Coffee Break

For tickets cal l 202.547.1122 or visit ShakespeareTheatre.org.

22

+1

EM: I also think Antonio and Shylock are birds of a feather. And with Derek Smith as Antonio, paired with Mark Nelson as our Shylock, I consciously wanted them to both be a little bit younger than what is often the case, a little closer to the age that they might actually have been. But I also feel that but for a trick of birth, either one of them could be the other one.

MK: I think that’s a wonderful idea. I think that’s why Shakespeare felt it okay to call the play The Merchant of Venice. That refers to Antonio, but he didn’t call the play Antonio and he didn’t call it Shylock.

EM: Because they’re both merchants.

MK: Since you were at the theatre last we’ve finally gotten rid of the sand from The Persians. You’ve been so busy since you were here, you’re now doing Arms and the Man at Guthrie Theater, and you’re about to do A Time To Kill at Arena Stage, which is a modern play. Do you enjoy going back and forth between the different genres of the theatre?

EM: It’s my favorite thing. The same year I did Ion I did two world premieres and a musical. You taught me this, but I find as a director, doing each kind informs the other. I don’t actually treat a contemporary play all that differently than I treat a Shakespeare play. It’s funny, because the play at Arena is another trial play. So, I’m going to be “trial-scened out”.

MK: Well, I’m looking forward to seeing your production of The Merchant of Venice.

This is months before you go into rehearsal, but I know you’ve been thinking about The Merchant of Venice. What interests you about doing the play now?

EM: That’s a good question, and part of that same question is why is it the most popular Shakespeare play of 2010–2011? Some of it has to do with cycling through the repertory, but there must be something going on, I think, which has to do with property and commerce and business. Everything in this play is commodified. People are reduced to their wealth, and wealth is the measure of all things. There must be something in our society that wants to consider that. I remember a book that you told me to read that you were interviewed in called On Directing Shakespeare. Do you remember this book?

MK: Well, it’s the only book I’m in, so of course I remember it.

EM: It’s a great book, we should sell it in the lobby. The author said that there are four ways of doing Shakespeare: Do it in Elizabethan period, do it in a period analogy and set it somewhere else, do it in a no-period time, or do it contemporary. What we’ve settled on is the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1920s. I was looking for a place that was analogous to what Venice meant to Shakespeare—which was the most polyglot, cosmopolitan place where cultures were colliding and everyone was trying to figure out currencies to deal with one another—and the currencies they are settling on are all financial.

MK: What is it about the 1920s? Did you set it there because it was an “up” period before the economy fell apart?

EM: Your first question was “Why Merchant now?” and it must have something to do with the collapse of our economy. When there are fewer crumbs for us to fight over, we are more tempted to fight over them in ways that poison us and make us think about ourselves as separate groups. So, I think there’s definitely that element: that the 1920s are on the precipice of something that none of these people know is coming.

MK: For a long time, people didn’t want to go to [Merchant] because they considered it anti-Semitic. Here in 2011, what do you think?

EM: There’s an element of that in there, a part of the play that makes it very dangerous. It’s a world where everyone is a little bit racist or a little bit bigoted or a little bit sexist or a little bit homophobic. Actually, every single character expresses some version of this. I’m convinced that Shakespeare knew what he was doing.

MK: I think that you’re right. I think that Shakespeare is examining prejudices, including anti-Semitism. But that does not make the play anti-Semitic. That extraordinary speech that Shylock has, “hath not a Jew eyes,” cannot have been written by a person who is anti-Semitic.

EM: It cannot be.

MK: It humanizes what was a comic villain. All you have to do is look at Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta.

EM: To Barabas.

MK: He’s a very arch comic villain who kills everybody. You can see the difference when looking at Shakespeare’s writing.


directed by Ethan McSweeny

June 21–July 24

18

21

he wrote The Merchant of Venice, but he created a Jewish villain that was much more than a cartoon.

Shakespeare borrowed his plot almost whole cloth from a 14th-century Italian book called Il Pecorone. Beyond the story, the very name of Venice would have conjured up specific associations in the Elizabethan mind: tremendous wealth generated from trade, well-ordered political and legal systems and tolerance for foreigners. In reality, however, Venice was far less tolerant, restricting its Jewish residents to enclosed neighborhoods it called “ghettos.” As with his Italian plays before and after, Shakespeare used Venice as a stand-in for London, commenting more on the personal conflicts generated in his city’s commercial interactions than on Italian religious persecution.

But it was Shylock, whose anguish over losing his daughter and his money fuels his vengeful rage, that kept this play on stage almost continuously since its writing. The Irish actor Charles Macklin chose Shylock as his star vehicle in a 1741 production, playing him as a resolute villain. Edmund Kean, by contrast, created a much more sympathetic figure in 1814. After the late-19th century actor Henry Irving followed suit, the play all but became The Tragedy of Shylock, so much so that

the other parts were edited down. One production to restore the balance was John Barton’s 1978 Royal Shakespeare Company version, which featured Patrick Stewart as a memorable Shylock but also gave the other characters their due. Still, great actors have continued to engage with Shylock, including Dustin Hoffman in London in 1989 and Al Pacino on film in 2004 and on Broadway in 2010. This challenging and fiery play is unlikely to disappear from the stage in its next four centuries.

Open Rehearsal Sunday, June 12 Sidney Harman Hall* Visit ShakespeareTheatre.org for details

Windows Sunday, June 26 at 5 p.m. The Forum in Sidney Harman Hall*

Engage in a lively discussion with local scholars and the artistic staff.

Diving Shakespeare Wednesday, June 29 at 5 p.m. The Forum in Sidney Harman Hall*

Explore the play’s relevance through a theological perspective.

Post-Performance Discussion Wednesday, June 29, after the performanceSidney Harman Hall*

Ask questions of the acting company.

Classics in Context Saturday, July 16 at 5 p.m. The Forum in Sidney Harman Hall*

Learn about the social and cultural context of our plays during this roundtable discussion. Reservations not required.

SPECIAL EVENT!The Merchant of Venice SymposiumSaturday, June 25, 2011 10 a.m.– 1 p.m.The Forum in Sidney Harman Hall

*Seating for all events is based on availability on a first-come, first-served basis.

FREE

FREE

FREE

FREE

FREE

Upcoming Events for The Merchant of Venice

Commerce and Controversy by Akiva Fox

What keeps bringing us back to The Merchant of Venice? By some accounts, it is second only to Hamlet in frequency of performance. Perhaps its popularity lies in its timeless themes: cut-throat business dealings, the challenges of true love and religious conflict. The play tells the story of Antonio, the title merchant whose generosity to his friend Bassanio endangers his own life, and of the trials that threaten Bassanio’s marriage to the lovely heiress Portia. Their journeys through peril to triumph are the equal of any found in Shakespeare’s works.

Despite its memorable protagonists, however, what has kept The Merchant of Venice so popular for so long has been its memorable antagonist. This character appears in only five scenes, but makes such a strong impression that great leading actors have flocked to play him. Shylock, the Jewish moneylender who

offers Antonio a loan with a fearsome collateral, fascinated audiences from the beginning. When Shakespeare’s company registered the play for publication in July 1598, in fact, they declared it “otherwise called The Jew of Venice.” Shylock is one of Shakespeare’s most complex and (particularly in our time) most controversial characters, a troubling figure who has held the stage for more than four centuries.

Jewish characters had appeared in Elizabethan plays before The Merchant of Venice; perhaps because they had been banned from England since 1290, Jews made for convenient cardboard villains on stage. That is not to say that no real Jews lived in England, for small communities practiced their religion in secret. One of those Jews, a converted Portuguese doctor named Rodrigo Lopez, was executed in 1594 for allegedly plotting to poison Queen Elizabeth. This case brought back to the stage a five-year-old play, the late Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, in which a cartoonishly evil Jewish villain poisons an entire convent of nuns before he is killed. Shakespeare may have been capitalizing on this play’s popularity when


Imagine any one of our productions operating at 60%. Would you cut Mrs. Cheveley’s purple dress or the staircase from An Ideal Husband? The rain in Cymbeline or the orchestra from Candide?

Donors are critical to the Shakespeare Theatre Company. Ticket sales cover just 60% of the cost of producing the plays you love at STC. We rely on gifts from our generous Stars and Artistic Circle members to cover the gap.

From now through July 31, the end of our fiscal year, all gifts to the Shakespeare Theatre Company will be matched by an anonymous donor, up to a total of $500,000.

Double the impact of your giving, and help us close out our season in the strongest financial position possible.

To donate, please visit ShakespeareTheatre.org/Support or call 202.547.1122, option 7.

The Ideal Production

With Donor Support.

Please remember the Shakespeare Theatre Company in your estate plans.

The legal designation for the Shakespeare Theatre Company in your will or trust: The Shakespeare Theatre, a nonprofit organization with headquarters located in Washington, D.C.

Federal tax identification number 52-1405988

Without Donor Support.

Shortly after she enters the courtroom disguised as a young lawyer, Portia asks the defendant and plaintiff to identify themselves. Generations of readers and audiences have asked the same question with regard to the identity of the play itself. The Merchant of Venice appeared in print for the first time in 1600 as The most excellent Historie of the Merchant of Venice; however, on the sheet which followed the title page appeared another title, The comicall History of the Merchant of Venice. Near the end of the 20th century, one publisher of Shakespeare’s works listed the play as a tragedy. History? Comedy? Tragedy? In the end, the play seems more of a conundrum than anything else.

In shaping The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare consulted a number of sources that ultimately yielded two plots and a sub-plot. There are, in fact, two climaxes in the structure of the play, the first at its center, when Bassanio wins Portia—the kind of climax typical

of other Shakespearean romantic comedies. The second climax comes at the critical moment of the courtroom scene, when Shylock comes perilously

close to winning his case against Antonio.

This second climax undercuts, and, some would argue, scuttles what many have seen as the real theme of the play. In the introduction to his Arden edition of the play, John Russell Brown concludes with a statement of this theme: “In the scramble of give and take, when appearance and reality are hard to distinguish, one thing seems certain: that giving is the

most important part—giving prodigally, without thought for the taking.”

The theme of love as selfless giving finds its finest flowering in Portia’s offer of herself to Bassanio. After Bassanio finds her picture in the lead casket, she gives him everything: “Myself, and what is mine, to you and yours / Is now converted.” Her complete gift of self underlies the famous speech

2322

The Merchant of Venice: Comedy or Conundrumby John W. Mahon

“Which is the merchant here?

And which the Jew?” Portia, act 4, scene 1

John Everett Millais, Portia (Kate Dolan) (1886).

25

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE CAST

AUBREY DEEKER*GRATIANO

MARK NELSON*SHYLOCK

BENJAMIN PELTESON*TUBAL

MATTHEW CARLSON*LORENZO

JULIA COFFEY*PORTIA

ANDY MURRAY*

DEREK SMITH*ANTONIO

LIZ WISAN*NERISSA

DREW ESHELMAN*DUKE OF VENICE

DANIEL PEARCE*LANCELOT GOBBO

AMELIA PEDLOW*JESSICA

TIM GETMAN*

DREW CORTESE*BASSANIO

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers.†Appearing courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association

ENSEMBLETRAVIS BLUMER

ADAM EWEREMILY JOSHI-POWELL

KEVIN STEVENSPAUL STUART†

HANNAH WOLFE

Ethan McSweenyDirector

Andrew LiebermanSet Designer

Jennifer MoellerCostume Designer

Marcus DoshiLighting Designer

Steven CahillComposer/ Sound Designer

Karma CampChoreographer

Pat McCorkleCasting Director


Deena BurkeVoice and Text Coach

Jenny LordAssistant Director

Bonnie Brady*Stage Manager

Benjamin Royer*Assistant Stage Manager

ARTISTIC TEAM

on mercy in the courtroom scene, but it is withheld at the end of the scene, when she puts mercy aside to render judgment.

Here we come to the second principal cause of audience difficulty with the play, Shakespeare’s treatment of Shylock. The playwright’s apparent intentions are clear from Shylock’s very first appearance: “I hate him for he is a Christian...If I can catch him once upon the hip, / I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.” Shylock reinforces his villainy with virtually everything he does in later scenes, until we reach the speech that echoes down the centuries to haunt us: “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections...?” In his refusal to simplify the complexity of all things human, Shakespeare demonstrates the truth of Shylock’s last words in this speech: “The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”

The Fifth Act serves as a coda to the play, reinforcing the theme of self-sacrificing love in the resolution of the quarrel over rings. But the damage has been done, and audiences emerge from performances of the play unable to

forget the vivid “Hath not a Jew eyes” speech or the image of a Shylock leaving the play bent down under the weight of burdens.

The play remains a conundrum, in Kenneth Rothwell’s words, “the woefullest but most complicated comedy ever written.” But, second only to Hamlet in popularity among Shakespeare’s works, The Merchant of Venice will continue to attract readers and audiences seeking to understand its complexities and to enjoy its vividly-realized characters.

24

Bassanio (Hank Stratton) chooses the correct casket and wins the hand of Portia (Enid Graham). Photo from STC’s 1999 production of The Merchant of Venice by Carol Rosegg.

For t ickets cal l 202.547.1122 or visit ShakespeareTheatre.org.

Dates and times subject to change; visit ShakespeareTheatre.org.

H Sidney Harman Hall L Lansburgh Theatre

27

FREE EVENTS

Happenings at the Harman Conversations and performances with some of the area’s leading artists. Seating based on availability on a first-come, first-served basis. Reservations not required. Artists subject to change.

SHAKESPEARE STARS EVENT

Meet the Cast Meet the cast and artistic team of our productions while enjoying a glass of wine and a delightful reception with other Theatre donors. The director will talk about his/her vision for the play, followed by a presentation by the production’s designers.

For more information about Shakespeare Stars, visit ShakespeareTheatre.org/Support.

Old TimesMay 17–July 3

SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY

1 2H Will on the Hill

7:30

1 3 4H Happenings:

Washington Revels noon

5 6 7

8 9 10L Old Times

Open Rehearsal 7:30

11H Happenings:

Ballet Teatro Internationale noon

12 13H Trey McIntyre

Project 8:00

14H Trey McIntyre

Project 2:00 and 8:00

15 16 17H The Merchant

of Venice Meet the Cast 6:00

L Old Times 7:30

18

19L Old Times

8:00

H The Washington Ballet’s Carmen 8:00

20L Old Times

8:00


21L Old Times

2:00 and 8:00

H The Washington Ballet’s Carmen 2:30 and 8:00

22H The Washington

Ballet’s Carmen 1:00 and 5:30

L Old Times Windows 5:00

L Old Times 7:30

23L Old Times

7:45

24 25H Happenings:

Congressional Chorus noon

L Old Times 7:30 Post-Performance Discussion

26L Old Times

8:00

27L Old Times

8:00

28L Old Times

2:00 and 8:00

29L Old Times

2:00 and 7:30

30 31L Old Times

7:30

SPECIAL EVENTS

MAY

26 Photo of Holly Twyford, Tracy Lynn Middendorf and Steven Culp.

Trey McIntyre Project Presented by The Washington Performing Arts SocietyMay 13–14Sidney Harman Hall

Will on the HillAll the World’s a StageMonday, May 2Sidney Harman Hall

H Happenings: Washington Balalaika Society noon

L Old Times 7:30


OPENING NIGHT

Carmen The Washington BalletMay 18–22Sidney Harman Hall

FREE EVENTS

ReDiscovery Reading Works for the ReDiscovery series are chosen by Artistic Director Michael Kahn. Guest artists join members of the Washington theatrical community to investigate these great but lesser-known plays of world literature. Reservations required.


OTHER EVENTS

Shakespeare and the Law Panel Discussion The Shakespeare and the Law discussion series, moderated by Abbe Lowell, brings together a panel of experts in different areas of law to explore contemporary legal issues through the window of Shakespeare’s plays. Tickets are $25.

Young Prose Nights Join other savvy theatregoers ages 21–35 for a fantastic performance and time to mingle. Events are fun, classical and financially friendly.

Sign-Interpreted Audio-Described


29

Join us for our next Young Prose Night!

Old Times June 1The Merchant of Venice June 30


1L Old Times

Young Prose Night 7:30

2L Old Times

8:00

3L Old Times

8:00

4L Old Times

2:00 and 8:00

5L Old Times

2:00 and 7:30

6L ReDiscovery

Reading 7:30

7L Old Times

7:30

8H Happenings:

Chelsey Green noon

L Old Times 7:30

9 L Old Times

8:00

H “Frailty they name is...” Shakespeare and the Law: Discrimination 6:30

10L Old Times

8:00

11L Old Times

2:00 and 8:00

L Old Times Classics in Context 5:00

12L Old Times

2:00 and 7:30

13 14L Old Times

7:30

15H Happenings:

WPAS: Men and Women of the Gospel Choir noon

L Old Times 7:30

16L Old Times

8:00

17L Old Times

8:00

18L Old Times

2:00 and 8:00

19L Old Times

2:00 and 7:30

20 21L Old Times

7:30

H The Merchant of Venice 7:30

22H Happenings:

Antonini Dance noon

L Old Times 7:30


23L Old Times

8:00


24L Old Times

8:00


25

26 27H The Merchant

of Venice 7:45

28L Old Times

7:30

H The Importance of Being Earnest Screening 7:30

29 30L Old Times

8:00

H The Merchant of Venice Young Prose Night 8:00

SPECIAL EVENTS

JUNE

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The Importance of Being Earnest Screening screened in HD from the Roundabout Theatre CompanyTuesday, June 28Sidney Harman Hall

OPENING NIGHT

L Old Times 2:00 and 7:30

L The Merchant of Venice Windows 5:00


Old TimesMay 17–July 3

Photo of Holly Twyford by Scott Suchman.

The Merchant of Venice SymposiumSaturday, June 25The Forum in Sidney Harman Hall

H Happenings: Furia Flamenca noon

L Old Times noon and 7:30

H The Merchant of Venice 7:30 Post-Performance Discussion

H The Merchant of Venice Symposium

L Old Times 2:00 and 8:00

H The Merchant of Venice 2:00 and 8:00



1L Old Times

8:00


2L Old Times

2:00 and 8:00


3L Old Times

2:00


4 5H The Merchant

of Venice 7:30

6H The Merchant

of Venice 7:30

7H The Merchant

of Venice 8:00

8H The Merchant

of Venice 8:00

9H The Merchant

of Venice 2:00 and 8:00

10H The Merchant


11H NT Live presents:

The Cherry Orchard 7:30

12H The Merchant

of Venice 7:30

13H The Merchant

of Venice 7:30

14H The Merchant

of Venice 8:00

15H The Merchant

of Venice 8:00

16H The Merchant


H The Merchant of Venice Classics in Context 5:00

17H The Merchant


18 19H The Merchant

of Venice 7:30

20H The Merchant

of Venice noon and 7:30

21H The Merchant

of Venice 8:00

22H The Merchant

of Venice 8:00

23H The Merchant


24H The Merchant

of Venice 2:00

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25 26 27 28 29 30

FREE EVENTS


Sign-Interpreted Audio-Described



FreeforAll FreeforAll FreeforAll FreeforAll FreeforAll FreeforAll FreeforAll FreeforAll FreeforAll FreeforAll FreeforAll FreeforAll FreeforAll FreeforAll












PRESENTED BY

August 18–September 4 31

“One of the best productions of this or any season.”

The WashingtonianJULIUS CAESAR

SPECIAL EVENTS

JULY

30

NT LiveThe Cherry OrchardMonday, July 11Sidney Harman Hall

Photos of Aubrey Deeker, Andrew Long, Dan Kremer and Tom Hammond by Carol Rosegg.

the Merchantof Venice June 21–July 24

The Shakespeare Theatre Company is proud to present performances by many of Washington’s most acclaimed companies as well as visiting national and international artists through the Harman Center for the Arts. Located in the heart of the arts district in Washington, D.C., the Harman Center for the Arts opens doors for many multi-disciplinary art forms to be enjoyed.

Furthering this mission, Happenings at the Harman offers another exciting season of free performances celebrating the best of dance, film, poetry and theatre. Memorable performers will return and the introduction of new directions in jazz and dance are just some of the highlights planned for the upcoming season. Many of this year’s Happenings also celebrate the work of STC’s 2010–2011 mainstage productions along with several city-wide festivals.

These free afternoon performances are held in The Forum in Sidney Harman Hall on Wednesdays from noon to 1 p.m.

A schedule of events can be found in the Asides calendar (pages 26–31) or online at ShakespeareTheatre.org.

The Harman Center for the Arts

Photos (from top to bottom): Congressional Chorus; Furia Flamenca; Washington Revels and Washington Balalaika Society. 33

Connor Studios

32

We are deeply saddened by

the passing of our dear friend,

trustee and loyal supporter

Sidney Harman. His generous

investment in the mission and

expansion of the Shakespeare

Theatre Company resulted

in the construction of Sidney

Harman Hall. The many

performances on its theatre

and Forum stages have

honored and will continue

to honor Sidney’s interest

in providing Washington

audiences a wide variety of

performances held in world-

class spaces.

Sidney was fond of quoting

Maxwell Anderson’s editorial:

“if we are to be remembered

as more than a mass of people

who lived and fought wars and

died, it is for our arts that we

will be remembered.” Thanks

to Sidney’s generosity, spirit,

leadership and philanthropy,

we will always remember

Sidney fondly for his great

contributions to the arts and

to our nation’s capital.

1918–2011

32

Remembering Sidney Harman

Photo by Kevin Allen.

PRESENTED BY

ABOUT FREE FOR ALL

The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Free For All is a much-loved Washington tradition, offering free performances of a Shakespearean classic to the general public. STC is thrilled to kick off our 25th Anniversary Season with Julius Caesar, originally presented during the 2007–2008 inaugural season at Sidney Harman Hall.

ABOUT THE PLAY

As swift and enthralling as a political thriller, Julius Caesar portrays the life-and-death struggle for power in Rome. Fearing that Caesar’s growing strength and imperial ambitions threaten the Republic, a faction of politicians plots to assassinate him. But when Caesar is killed, chaos engulfs Rome. Alive with stunning rhetoric, Julius Caesar investigates the intoxicating effects of power and the dangers of idealism. In Caesar, Brutus, and the young Marc Antony, Shakespeare created three fascinating, dynamic characters.

TICKETS

Blocks of tickets will be made available to the public for each performance of Julius Caesar. All 2011–2012 Season subscribers and Friends of Free For All may reserve Free For All tickets in advance for select performances. Subscribers are eligible for two tickets per subscription seat; the number of tickets that Friends of Free For All may reserve varies by level of giving. Visit ShakespeareTheatre.org/FFA for more information.

“

All hail Julius Caesar! … One of the best productions of

this or any season.”The Washingtonian

“Electrifying”DC Theatre Scene

“Emotionally powerful”

The Georgetowner

“Majestic”The Washington Times

REFLECTIONS ON FREE FOR ALL

FRIENDS OF FREE FOR ALLFree For All would not be possible without the hundreds of individuals who generously donate to support the program each year. Only with the help of the Friends of Free For All is STC able to offer free performances, making Shakespeare accessible to Washington, D.C., area residents every summer.

In appreciation for this support, Friends of Free For All receive exclusive benefits during the festival such as reserved Free For All tickets, the option to have tickets mailed in advance, special event invitations, program recognition and more.

For more information, please visit ShakespeareTheatre.org/FOFFA or call us at 202.547.1122, option 7.

34

21st Annual!

August 18–September 4

Photos of Dan Kremer and the cast of STC’s 2008 production of Julius Caesar by Carol Rosegg. FFA photo by Kevin Allen.

I remember once when I was at the Free For All, there was a couple sitting next to me with a very, very young child, and I began to talk to them and I asked, ‘Why are you here?’ And they said, ‘Where else would we have the opportunity to introduce our child to Shakespeare and be able to afford it?’ Jane Alexander, former Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts

Free For All gives me a renewed sense of relevance of the classics. We need to continue to produce innovative productions of classical works that amplify and illustrate issues we confront in modern life. We have truly an Elizabethan reach, just as Shakespeare did in his own time. There is genuine delight and interest on the part of our Free For All audiences and a definite response to the complexity of thought and language in the plays. The people who fill the seats—especially the young people—give me great hope. We are creating the audiences of tomorrow.

Michael Kahn, Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company

Some of my proudest moments during seven years at the Shakespeare Theatre Company came from working on the Free for All. It’s a cherished Washington tradition for good reason: the Free For All brings world-class productions of Shakespeare, for FREE, to anyone and everyone, including children experiencing Shakespeare for the first time and families who can’t normally afford a night at the theatre. David Muse, Artistic Director of The Studio Theatre and former Associate Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company

‘‘

‘‘

‘‘

’’

’’

’’

35Photo by Kevin Allen.

JULIUS CAESAR

You can see the ShakesPEERS perform Cymbeline May 12 in the Forum in Sidney Harman Hall and May 13 at THEARC.

Many in-kind partners help the Shakespeare Theatre Company tackle its production challenges.

MAC Cosmetics (maccosmetics.com), the Official Cosmetic of STC since 2009, assists with make-up for all mainstage productions (including Cymbeline, shown above) and hosts educational make-up seminars for STC’s production staff and performers. All make-up looks, from traditional to fantastical, are show-specific and sometimes require more than a dozen trials.

STC maintains a large stock of shoes and boots and orders show-specific footwear for every production. During our 2009–2010 Leadership Repertory Production of Richard II and Henry V, there were two sets of costumes, boots and armor packed into the dressing rooms at once—a very full house. Old Town Shoe and Luggage Repair (donshoe.com) repairs and rubbers STC shoes throughout the season. This is necessary for the actors’ safety, and STC uses 15 to 150 pairs of shoes per show. At $35 per pair, the cost of rubbering adds up quickly!

Cleaning togas can be a challenge but Parkway Custom Dry Cleaning (parkwaydrycleaning.com) has provided superior care to hundreds of STC costumes. Our costumes are dry cleaned every Monday and laundering is usually done overnight. The togas in Julius Caesar take 18 hours to launder, dry and press because they come in contact with stage blood. There is not enough time to clean them on days with both matinee and evening performances, so two sets of costumes will be created for this year’s Free For All.

These companies provide thousands of dollars in budget relief to STC and allow the theatre to direct funds back to staging quality productions and providing innovative education and community engagement programs.

To join our growing list of in-kind sponsors, contact the Corporate Giving Office at 202.547.3230 ext. 2342 [email protected].

Article author Noreen Major is the Corporate Giving Manager at the Shakespeare Theatre Company.

ShakesPEERS: New Neighborhoods, New Focusby Emily Townsend

Who are the ShakesPEERS?ShakesPEERS is a unique program at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in which D.C. teens spend their afternoons exploring the work of William Shakespeare on their own terms. The PEERS find a safe environment in which they can take creative risks, find their artistic voices, build a sense of community and discover the relevancy of classical theatre in their lives. For the PEERS, Shakespeare isn’t bound inside a book for class but is an exciting part of every week.

ShakesPEERS in 2011In January, the PEERS program underwent some exciting new changes. The program tripled its number of participants by expanding from its home base in the STC Education Studio into two new locations in the District: Sitar Arts Center and H.D. Woodson High School, a D.C. Public School in Anacostia. Despite being spread out across the city, the PEERS all follow the same curriculum taught by STC Education staff and teaching artists.

In another new move, the PEERS’ final performance will now be chosen based on STC’s season; this spring, the PEERS will perform Cymbeline. In February, the PEERS from each site met for the first time and saw Cymbeline free of charge, looking for inspiration for their own production. After the

show, the PEERS had a special talkback with the actors, where they were able to ask questions about the play and even learned a few tips about how to dispel pre-show jitters.

Before their performances in May, the PEERS will unite several more times for special All Cast meetings. Together, they’ll have special workshops on stage combat, physical comedy and more. All of these changes have invigorated the ShakesPEERS program and widened the opportunity for D.C. teens to discover just how relevant classical theatre can be to their lives.

Emily Townsend is the Education Intern at the Shakespeare Theatre Company.

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Above photo of the Queen (Franchelle Stewart Dorn) in Cymbeline wore MAC Cosmetics. Photo by Scott Suchman.

The Merchants of MagicThank you to our in-kind partners

Share your passion for

theatre and the law

with fellow D.C. legal

minds as a member

of the Shakespeare

Theatre Company

Bard Association.

Members of the Bard

Association experience

classical theatre at its

finest while meeting

and interacting with

other members of

the legal profession

and Washington

VIPs. Join today and

enjoy benefits such

as advance ticket

purchase for the

2012 Mock Trial and

Shakespeare and the

Law events.

For additional information, please email [email protected].

BARDASSOCIATION

Join the Shakespeare

Theatre Company

Photo by Kevin Allen.

Old TownShoe & Luggage Repair

37

SPENd THE SUMMER with Shakespeare!

Two-Week Day Camps

June 20–August 13

REGISTER TOdAy! Call 202.547.5688 or

visit ShakespeareTheatre.org/Education

CAMPshakespeare 2011

Groundlings Ages 9-11 Young Performers Ages 12-14

Teen Ensemble Ages 15-18

Locations in Washington DC, Silver Spring, McLean & Alexandria

Silver Spring LocationSilver Spring Civic Center

NEW!

EDUCATION PROGRAMS

AUDIENCE SERVICESContact the Box Officesat the Lansburgh Theatre and Sidney Harman HallTickets: 202.547.1122Toll-free: 877.487.8849Group sales: 202.547.1122, option 6TTY (hearing impaired): 202.638.3863Box Office fax: 202.608.6350Bookings: 202.547.3230 ext. 2206

Box Office HoursWhen there is an evening performance:Monday: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.Tuesday–Saturday: 10 a.m.–6:30 p.m.Sunday: noon–6:30 p.m.When there is no evening performance:Monday–Saturday: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.Sunday: noon–6 p.m.

Traveling to the TheatresThe Lansburgh Theatre is located near the Archives–Navy Mem’l–Penn Quarter and Gallery Pl–Chinatown Metro stations. Sidney Harman Hall is near Gallery Pl–Chinatown and Judiciary Square. For driving directions and parking information, visit ShakespeareTheatre.org/Visit.

DiningFood and beverages are available one hour before each performance. Pre-order before curtain for immediate pick-up at intermission. Reservations at neighborhood fine dining restaurants can be made on our website.

Gift ShopsLansburgh Theatre and Sidney Harman Hall gift shops are open before curtain, at intermission and for a short time after each performance.

Lansburgh Theatre450 7th Street NW

Tom Arban

Sidney Harman Hall610 F Street NW

Our theatres are accessible to patrons with physical disabilities or mobility impairments. Please request accessible seating when purchasing tickets.

Audio-enhancement devices are available for all performances. Receivers with earphones (or neck loops with “T” switch for use with hearing aids) are available at the coat check on a first-come basis.

Please see event calendar for dates of sign-interpreted and audio-described performances.

Program notes in large print and Braille are available at the coat check.

AccessibilityThe Shakespeare Theatre Company is committed to providing full access for persons with disabilities.

Go to ShakespeareTheatre.org/Visit

T H E A T R E A R E A M A P

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a publication of the shakespeare theatre company asideswelcome to the final two plays of the...

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