Hello again from the Michigan Shakespeare Festival!

      It’s getting close to the beginning of rehearsals and build for the 2011 Season. 

First, some housekeeping: If you haven’t yet, please come by our website and check out the company for 2011 (www.MichiganShakespeareFestival.com) and pick up your tickets. The earlier you buy them, the better seats you can get for all three shows. And really nice discounts are available if you buy a season ticket — which gives you all three shows: Much Ado About Nothing, The Winter’s Tale and Moliere’s Tartuffe.

      And now, on to more fun stuff. In the April newsletter, I talked about the company for 2011 (they are amazing, you’re going to love their work) and about how important all of their jobs are to bringing together the finished product. Well, once they were hired, the intense pre-production design and conceptual-work for the season began in earnest.

      The “concept” for Tartuffe was established in the very choosing of the play. The MSF has never before done Moliere, and for our inaugural production by this brilliant comedic playwright, Robert Kauzlaric — the director for Tartuffe — and I wanted to show off his wit, style, and humor in the strongest way possible — by presenting the play period (Paris, late 17th century) and use the best of all possible translations: Richard Wilbur’s poetic 1968 classic. This production will be all about period details: the set, the costumes, the music, the style of acting — will all be glorious.

      Much Ado About Nothing is a terrific show on paper — not one of Shakespeare’s problematic plays like Pericles or Cymbeline where a director has to have a firm hand in making it work. Much Ado works all by itself; which is probably the main reason it’s such a favorite show to produce. But, like any work of Shakespeare, there are important questions that need to be answered in the production of Much Ado. 

      The first is setting: time and place. Unlike the histories or even some of the tragedies, Much Ado does not have a “set” time in which the action takes place: it’s not medieval like Macbeth or early Renaissance like Romeo & Juliet or set in ancient Rome (not that these shows NEED to be set in these times, but at least there are some specifics if a director wants to use them). All we know in Much Ado is that there was a war (or a battle in a war) and the men are coming home after their victory. And we are given the location of Messina, and we know that Don Pedro is from Aragon, but other than those names (and the titling of the Princes as “Dons”), we are not given any Spanish connection in the text. So it’s all rather open to creativity. 

      Knowing that Tartuffe was going to be strict period, and knowing that The Winter’s Tale was going to be “magical” — more on that later — I decided that the other show, Much Ado, should be more modern in its look. And yet, I didn’t want to set it present day. There is too much importance in the text placed on a lady’s purity for a comfortable present-day production — unless we wanted to make a statement about this family being out-of-touch with current morays, which I didn’t.

      I liked the idea of setting it at the beginning of the modern social age — at the beginning of women’s liberation; where one niece is on the forefront of a movement and her cousin more traditional. The early 50’s contained the beginning of the break-down of the strict class system — and so I decided to set Much Ado About Nothing in 1953. End of the Korean War, Life magazine pictures of Jack and Jaqueline Kennedy’s wedding, and the beginning of modern combo-jazz. Working with Jeromy Hopgood (scenic), Lauren Montgomery (costumes), and Kate Hopgood (musical composition) we’ve created the foundation of a show both recognizably modern and still distant, highlighting the clothes, the music, the style of the time and yet allowing the “Merry War” to be played to its full potential without needing major cuts or alternative interpretations to make it work.

      I think Leonato’s summer home, early spring of 1953, with all the early-swanky music, cocktail party glamour, and Latin-dance party fun will be a terrific backdrop for one of the best-loved Romantic Comedies of all time.

      Which brings us to The Winter's Tale. Known as one of Shakespeare’s “problem” plays, the first half of Winter’s Tale is a dark psychological drama and a large part of the second half is a gentle pastoral comedy. And there’s a statue that comes to life, the character of “Time,” and, of course, the most famous stage direction in Shakespeare: Exit followed by a Bear. So — what to do with The Winter’s Tale.

      There is a lovely scene near the beginning of Winter’s Tale where the young Prince Mamillius is playing with his mother, the very pregnant Queen Hermione. She says he tired her out, that she needs to sit for a while, and he offers to tell her a story. We never hear the story, we just know that it’s going to be a sad tale, as a “Sad tale’s best for Winter.” This sequence led me to decide not to pull away from the more fantastical elements of the play, but to embrace them as fairy-tale conceits.

      And, so, I decided to make The Winter’s Tale a fairy-tale story — albeit a very dark one, a la the Brothers Grimm. Jeromy Hopgood’s glorious scenic designs will evoke classic illuminated-manuscript lines and patterns — foreboding dreamscape stone for the Sicilian scenes and magic flowers for the Bohemian. The costumes, designed by Renae Pedersen Skoog, will be reminiscent of the pre-Raphaelite paintings of Leighton and Millais, and the music, composed by Kate Hopgood, will be classical violin music played as underscoring and sound effect all at once.

      The Directors, myself and Robert, the Design Staff, the Stage Management Staff, and the Acting Company are all coming together in just a few short weeks to begin the rehearsals and the builds for these three shows. And the Designers have laid an amazing foundation upon which we can build these productions. 

      We all very much look forward to seeing you all — and for you all to see the productions.

 

Janice L. Blixt