Since our founding in 2015, the Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival in Arizona has been a “gypsy” company without a home of its own. Like the troupes that performed in the inn yards of Shakespeare’s day, we’ve had to partner with local venues to survive. We’re not complaining. This process has made FlagShakes a nimble company with a time-tested devotion to Original Staging Practices. Now, we’re happy to announce that we have finally scored a home of our own! Following a soft opening in January, FlagShakes will host a grand opening for our new Beaver Street Theatre on April 23, 2025.
What It’s Taken to Get Here
The partnerships we’ve built over the past ten years were essential as we searched for a space and worked with business leaders and property owners to secure it. We also partnered with another arts nonprofit, Interference Series, to finance the project. Community ties are now helping us transform this former storage hall into a theatre. We’ve had workdays filled with artists and volunteers rolling up their sleeves, donating funds and goods and rallying community support. It’s taking a village to bring this dream to life.
How This Changes Our Season
FlagShakes has a strong partnership with nearby Lowell Observatory, where summer performances under our festival tent regularly sell out. But having a dedicated indoor space for rehearsals and performances expands our possibilities. No more performances at the mercy of our mountain town’s unpredictable spring and fall weather. No more scrambling for rehearsal venues. This stability allows us to fully invest in our productions and artists.
Growing Collaborations and Strengthening the Bottom Line
The Beaver Street Theatre is a flexible performance venue that can seat about 50 patrons. It will be a hub for an artistic community in desperate need of rehearsal and performance space. We’re already collaborating with the local arts community to bring in diverse voices and creative energy. Shared events and space rentals will create sustainable revenue streams so we can support our mission
while maintaining financial stability.
Looking Ahead
As we settle into our new theatre, we dream of expanding educational programs, deepening community engagement, and making this venue a true arts destination. In January, we hosted a sold-out production of Coriolanus with a Phoenix-based theatre company called Ronin. The show’s success showcased the potential of this venue. We can use it to bring in unique projects from around the state, feeding our town’s appetite for high-quality, actor-driven productions. In February, FlagShakes presented Shakespeare on Pluto, a lively opening act to what we hope will be a very long run in our new home.
Executive Director Dawn Tucker, Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival and Julie Hammonds, Founding Board President and current member of the Artistic Committee.
We asked two of our 2025 Season Directors to share some behind-the-scenes insights about their upcoming productions, their artistic inspirations, and what excites them most about bringing these stories to life. Here’s what they had to say!
Matthew Windham
Q: What show are you directing for FlagShakes, and what excites you most about it?
A: I’m directing Complete Works. I love watching skilled comedians at work, and being able to offer ideas to heighten and hone every comedic beat. I’m looking forward to spending several hours a day in a room filled with laughter. What could be better?!
Q: What’s the most rewarding or exciting part of directing with FlagShakes?
A: FlagShakes is a small but mighty band of talented and committed theatre-makers who I respect a ton. It’s an enormous honor to be part of the team.
Q: When you’re casting, what qualities do you look for in an actor?
A: Inventiveness, quirkiness and adaptability.
Q: Do you have a favorite FlagShakes memory from a past production?
A: I always looked forward to fight-call before every performance of Julius Caesar. There was something really special about getting to laugh and play with all my buddies in the cast, then turn deadly serious for a few moments as we ran through the fights and I got stabbed a bunch, and then check in with each other. You really couldn’t get murdered by a nicer group of people.
Q: What’s a fun fact about you that our actors and audiences might be surprised to learn?
A: I’m a very proud papa to the 3 best cats on this planet.
James Cougar Canfield
Q: What show are you directing for FlagShakes, and what excites you most about it?
A: I’m directing Emma, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel by Matthew Windham. Just being in Flagstaff itself is such a magical experience. The forest, the mountains- living in NYC and getting to escape this to this beautiful place for a few weeks to create art is so fantastic. Outside of location, it’s a group of people that I feel so comfortable with- they know how to take care of a team and know how tell a story, and support you in telling that story.
Q: What’s the most rewarding or exciting part of directing with FlagShakes?
A: With both projects I have previously directed for FlagShakes (As You Like It and The Importance of Being Earnest), we took some pretty big artistic swings, and the patrons were like, “let’s go, we’re coming along for this wild ride right there with you!” You can do these classics in new, exciting ways, and the FlagShakes audiences are going to be there for it. I love taking classical stories/scripts and telling them through a modern lens, and I think Emma is so very perfect to be explored like that- and I cannot wait to see what Matthew, the ensemble, and myself can create with this Jane Austen classic.
Q: When you’re casting, what qualities do you look for in an actor?
A: Big, fun choices and truth. Especially in a story like Emma, we need actors who are ready to have fun and fill the shoes of these iconic characters, but no matter how big the choices, the actor is always bringing truth to the table. I’m interested in actors who allow themselves into the text- yes, this is a classic story, but how do YOU as a performer fit into it? How do you bring YOUR truth?
Q: Do you have a favorite FlagShakes memory from a past production?
A: I loved getting to play Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night with FlagShakes. Jim Warren, the director of the production, really just let me run wild with how silly and stupid that character could be, and I just don’t often get the chance to be -that- over the top.
Q: What’s a fun fact about you that our actors and audiences might be surprised to learn?
A: Not really as fun fact, but I am currently directing my adaptation of The Secret Garden with Southwest Shakespeare Company. It performs April 4-13th at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, AZ.
As we wrap up our most successful summer season ever, we want to thank you for being an integral part of this journey. This year has been truly special, and we couldn’t have achieved so much without your incredible support.
Bringing Julius Caesar and The Merry Wives of Windsor to life under our festival tent at Lowell Observatory was a true pleasure. The setting was magical, and the response from you, our audience, was overwhelmingly positive. Your support allowed us to create unforgettable experiences and pay our talented artists more than ever before.
However, despite this season’s success, there’s still a gap between ticket sales and our overall costs. As the only professional theatre in Northern Arizona, we’re committed to maintaining the highest standards and supporting our artists, but we also see the importance of keeping ticket prices low.
Compared to our $30 general admission ticket, most professional theatre companies in Arizona charge between $50-$100 for their general admission tickets. Keeping our discount and youth tickets even lower and offering free senior matinees, pay-what-you-will previews, and school tours at just $200 per grade, we strive to make FlagShakes accessible.
Your donations help make all that possible. Recurring monthly donations are especially helpful in providing the stability we need to plan for future seasons and support our ongoing programs. (Link in bio)
Your continued generosity will make a significant difference, allowing us to keep delivering the quality performances you’ve come to expect and love.
Another way you can help is by taking a brief survey about what you want to see us produce next! These surveys help us gauge what programming is best for our community and how we can improve. (Link in bio).
Thank you for being such a vital part of our theatre community. We hope you can join us in celebrating 10 years of professional theatre in Northern Arizona by attending Lord and Lady Capulet’s Black, White, and Red Masquerade Ball on November 2!
Warmest thanks,
The FlagShakes Team
by Christine Schmidle, Director of Vision and Text, and Interim Executive Director, Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival
In 2023, I directed Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival’s seldom produced The Two Noble Kinsmen by
William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. What started out as a marketing challenge turned out to be an audience favorite! The company even had audience members come to see the production specifically to complete watching the canon.
Prepping the script for rehearsals, I noticed how ambivalent both Shakespeare and Fletcher were in their writing of this play. Fletcher more so than Shakespeare, but even Shakespeare kept his own opinion out of the text quite often. Discovering this opened up a lot more ways of understanding and seeing the play than I had originally thought. Emilia grew from an unidentified character to a young Amazonian who very much knew what she wanted throughout the rehearsal process. Surprisingly, Shakespeare and Fletcher‘s words supported that.
I had the immense fortune to work as Text Associate on the Shakespeare‘s Globe production of The Two Noble Kinsmen in 2018, directed by Barrie Rutter. This meant going into the FlagShakes production was possibly easier for me than many other directors discovering and directing this play. And yet, working on the play in Flagstaff opened up a whole new level of understanding. FlagShakes prides itself on being an actor led company and I think we discovered more in the rehearsal room because of this model. I don’t think I could have envisioned the feisty but firm interpretation of Emilia that our amazingly talented actor Audrey Young took on in this role. It’s a role that is almost impossible to read, and yet, put her on stage, give her some sass, and you have an Amazonian warrior breaking through the predetermined notions of the male-centric world of Athens.
While prepping for the production, I was determined to highlight the transcendence of the ages in Kinsmen. Costume designer Rin Hanovich created different worlds colliding and navigating on stage. I featured Chaucer in a newly added prologue, who appropriately was kept in Medieval costumes, followed by the steampunk nature of Athens. This collided with both the Rocker Babes of the Amazonians and the Adidas-wearing billionaires of Dubai, or rather, Thebes. The last group grounded the whole design: the tragic world of the working class of Athens–the Jailer and, in our case, her entourage – was in more traditional Renaissance costumes. What I liked about Rin’s interpretation was the visualization of the mind sets of these characters. Audiences could tell that both Arcite and Palamon were more interested in the Amazonians because both groups had modern dress, rather than the Jailer’s Daughter in her Renaissance garb. Audiences could also see the struggles of ‘steam punk’ Theseus having to negotiate with his new ‘biker’ bride Hippolyta, and his desire to get that knot tied before she might decide on a new lover.
I thought long and hard about how I wanted to portray Arcite and Palamon. Are these cousins possibly more to each other, lovers even? Besides the incestuous, I actually thought that taking that position would almost make this relationship easier to understand. I went for the harder decision and decided to keep them related and really good friends. But what does this mean, today, in our society? How do you portray a very close friendship between two young men, or rather boys, who have fought with each other countless times, are very comfortable with each other physically, and yet are not lovers? I was glad for the four weeks of rehearsal to establish this bond, and both Marcus Winn (Arcite) and Anthony Veneziano (Palamon) did an excellent job of showing that comfort level of closeness. What they also portrayed well was their constant competitiveness, climaxed in the scene where they are finally both in Emilia’s presence and get to confess their supposed love. ‘Forget I love her?’ says Palamon, and Arcite answers: ‘Though I think / I never shall enjoy her…’ (3.6) Although Emilia is right there in the scene, probably even in front of them, neither Arcite nor Palamon address her directly but are focused on their own competitiveness rather than impressing Emilia herself. What a wonderful and smart detail in this play; thanks Fletcher!
Audrey Young as Emilia gives a detailed view into her perspective of the character: “While Emilia’s opinion and sometimes actual presence, is overlooked by the male characters around her, she still stands strong in her thoughts and opinions. I believe this is best demonstrated in the scene mentioned above, when Arcite and Palamon battle for her hand in marriage. Alone on stage she makes it clear to the audience that she cannot decide between the two men and a little later, in the presence of Theseus, her opinion is still the same. She cannot be swayed by Theseus or her sister when it comes to taking a life simply because two men want her.”
In the rehearsal room, we came across this over and over again: Emilia’s words count. We found that Emilia’s line at the very beginning of the play: ‘If you grant not / my sister her petition … from henceforth I’ll not dare / to ask you anything, nor be so hard / ever to take a husband.’ (1.1) resonated through the play. There was a precedent set, something she had set herself and she was bound by her own word. It was those gems that we discovered together that made this play lift off of the page and the audience found joy and relevance in it. The production is “streamable” at flagshakes.org/flagshakes-films/
by Mac MacDaniel
One of the most rewarding things about being a fan of any artist, especially one with a long career, is watching their style evolve. Some of my favorite musicians — Metallica, Tom Waits, Tupac — have distinct artistic periods that are often in conversation with each other. Listening to Tom Waits’s early piano-heavy crooner records, you might not even realize that this is the same artist of albums like Bone Machine that feature morbid criminal ballads over instrumentation that sounds like — and sometimes is — just Tom banging on random objects. Tupac’s revolutionary social commentary on his early records evolves into the violent, confrontational rhymes on his later work. Fans felt betrayed when Metallica wrote their first radio-friendly record, cutting both their hair and their guitar solos, but that particular album has aged much better than its detractors.
And it’s obviously not just music. Lovers of Monet, Rodin, or the Coen Brothers will happily talk your ear off about the relative merits of those artists’ early or later work. Even if you don’t love your favorite artist’s entire oeuvre, you can see how their work evolves, how they revisit themes and ideas and imagery again and again, how they approach concepts as they become more deft and experienced in their craft.
As a great lover of Shakespeare, one of my biggest joys is in juxtaposing his early, middle, and late plays. You can see a twinkling of Romeo and Juliet in the eye of the playwright who starts out writing Two Gentlemen of Verona. A nihilistic middle play like King Lear might heighten your appreciation of the redemptive elements of a later play like The Tempest.
When I am trying to expose a friend to an artist whose work has meant a lot to me, I try to give them a sampling of that artist’s work from each period, like a flight of drinks. To give a taste for Tom Waits’s material, I might suggest that a friend try out three “B” records, because there’s a good album starting with a “B” in each period of his career. An early album like Blue Valentines, 1978, contrasts nicely with a middle album like Bone Machine, 1992, and then you can round off the flight with Bawlers, Brawlers & Bastards, from 2006.
Similarly, if you want to develop your palate for Shakespeare, I can’t think of a better experience than seeing the three plays that FlagShakes has selected for their 2022 season. One comedy from Shakespeare’s early career, one tragedy from his middle period, and one late play that defies genre conventions, sometimes grouped in with the late romances.
The Comedy of Errors, on this fall, is a light, silly, short play full of slapstick humor and mistaken identity. It’s representative of Shakespeare’s early work: over the top, full of rhyme, and with characters who are more caricatured and less developed than in his later works. Shakespeare’s early work, both comedy and tragedy, is so extra. Like Metallica said of their early shows, in order to get folks to pay attention to them, they had to play faster and louder than anyone else. The early Shakespeare seemed to think that the key to humor was just adding more. If one set of identical twins is funny, then it follows that two sets is even funnier, at least that appears to be his logic behind The Comedy of Errors, and because he’s Shakespeare, he succeeds where another writer might have failed. To see the same principle on the flip side of the coin, look at an early tragedy like Titus Andronicus, where the young Shakespeare seemed to think that by the same token, adding more dead bodies would make a play even more tragic. The jury’s still out on whether the principle holds up in tragedy as well as it does in comedy.
Othello, FlagShakes’s summer Shakespeare show, couldn’t be more different than The Comedy of Errors, both in terms of genre and writing style. If Comedy of Errors is about as light as Shakespeare plays get, Othello is perhaps as heavy as they get. Othello is more poetic, less rhyming, with characters who are much more three dimensional. Unlike the world of Comedy of Errors — where violence and injustice do occur, but are mostly perpetrated by well-meaning people who deserve forgiveness — the world of Othello is dominated by a scheming psychopath who refuses not only to repent, but to even explain his motivations. The tragedy of Othello is not only in the harm that occurs, but in the fact that it feels meaningless and random. The language of Othello is more muscular, more efficient, more noisy, not unlike Metallica’s middle period.
The final Shakespeare production of FlagShakes’s season, The Two Noble Kinsmen, is a strange play indeed, and for a few different reasons. It defies traditional genre conventions, sometimes called a “tragicomedy” — which means exactly what it sounds like — and sometimes lumped in with the other late plays that we call “romances.” It is also probably a collaboration between Shakespeare and a younger playwright, John Fletcher. Shakespeare’s later work is fascinating because at the end of his career, Shakespeare seemed more open to writing the nuance of real life, playing with the blurry line between happy and sad endings, between a just and an unjust universe, and between wrongs that can be righted and wrongs which cannot. The Two Noble Kinsmen is a wonderful adventure story that is — in my humble opinion — underrated. It deals with rich themes and ideas: the fact that sometimes we have to do the right thing for the wrong reason, sometimes getting exactly what we wish for isn’t a blessing, and sometimes a pleasant lie is better than the painful truth.
Shakespeare’s final plays remind me of the final record that Tupac worked on before his death. Like Shakespeare, Tupac continued publishing material after he died. The 7 Day Theory feels like a blending of the two extremes of Tupac’s career, from the more thoughtful political work of his early records to the more combative, beef-oriented work of his career on Death Row Records. In much the same way, Shakespeare blends comedy and tragedy at the end of his career. The maturity and power of both artists at the end of their careers makes me wish that they had been able to continue working for longer.
If you’ve ever had a drink flight — most commonly seen with beers, but for those of us who don’t drink alcohol, some coffee shops do flights of different coffees — you’ve probably noticed that it’s much easier to discern differences between similar drinks when you taste them in succession. I’ve always been a big coffee drinker, but up until I started going to coffee “cuppings,” I mostly thought that coffee was coffee. The first time I tasted a washed Colombian coffee right after a natural Ethiopian coffee, I realized just how much flavor variation there truly is. That made me appreciate all coffees that much more. I’m sure the experience is similar for folks developing their palates for different beers and liquors.
So, in 2022 I would encourage you to come out and see FlagShakes’s “Shakespeare Flight,” sample plays from different periods in Shakespeare’s career as a playwright, see his takes on different genres and themes, and pay attention to how his poetry deepened, from the rhyming witticisms of his early plays into the Baroque despair of his middle period, to the musical, magical transcendent verse of his late plays.
Mac MacDaniel is the artistic director of Elsewhere Shakespeare and the author of The Play’s the Thing: A Beginner’s Guide to Seeing and Enjoying Shakespeare.
*The above mentioned 2022 production of The Two Noble Kinsmen has been postponed until 2023. Want to see all of our shows in the 2022 season? Purchase season tickets today!
by Sonya Joseph
I’ve been seeing a lot of posts lately from my friends who work in theatre about what they are doing in light of the Black Lives Matter movement. Several have asked me for input. I haven’t really responded —I’m 53 years old, have been working in and around professional theatre, television, and film since my early 20’s, and frankly, they all could have listened earlier, asked for my input earlier, or just done better anytime over the last three decades.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to see theatre companies I’ve worked for in the past initiating conversations about diversity and starting Zoom readings of black plays (although as an Indian woman that doesn’t really help get me up on stage) but will any of these plays really see the light of day when the pandemic is over? Will actors of color get work? Breath not being held.
But, there remains the fact that I’ve had more than three decades of experience in this arena, so I do want to share my thoughts.
I’ve come up with a list of 10 things THAT WILL WORK to make the theatre (and film and television) a more diverse place.
- Audition actors of color. “But wait!” says every theatre in America, “we already do that.” Or they’ll say, “We invited them but nobody showed up!” In the mid 1990’s I heard this complaint from every artistic director in town. No. You did not invite them. You tacked on a statement about being “committed to inclusion, diversity, and providing equal employment opportunity” on to the end of the audition notice or added “all ethnicities encouraged to apply” as an afterthought. Eddie Levi Lee, of the marvelous Empty Space Theatre in Seattle, took my suggestions to heart and started wording casting notices with detailed information about what roles were open to color-blind casting, and it worked. Figure out what roles you are going to cast regardless of race, and put that information in the casting notice. Otherwise, don’t expect us to waste our time.
- Don’t debate; do. Back in the 90’s and 00’s, there was this great debate going on. August Wilson was all for people of color having their own theatres, their own plays, and just doing their own thing. There was another camp that was all about color-blind casting. And for years it has felt like getting the “right” answer to this debate had to happen before anything could change. So, until we know what is the right thing to do, let’s just play it safe and keep casting white people. C’mon people. Do. Both. Mount plays where playwrights of color create roles for actors of color, AND cast people of color in plays that have traditionally cast only white actors.
- Now here’s something that is going to help all actors: white, black, brown, and purple. Educate students and their parents about careers in the theatre. My poor father fought tooth and nail to keep me out of the theatre because, in his eyes, (and the eyes of pretty much everyone who doesn’t work in theatre) he envisioned me working for a pittance at a meaningless day job unless one day, by some luck of the draw, I managed to “become a star.” We all know that isn’t all there is. Regional theatre can pay quite well. Actors also work as writers, directors, teachers, producers, administrators, and more. I’ve made a good living at various points in my life from theatre alone, and no one would recognize my name. Can you imagine if we made these kinds of assumptions about doctors? As if only plastic surgeons were considered to have “made it” and every other kind of doctor was believed to be going door to door asking, “Hey, I’m a doctor, is anyone here sick?” That isn’t the reality and neither is the star scenario. We are a vital part of the economy, and this will only improve with greater diversity. And getting there starts with educating parents. We need their kids to help build more diverse communities of artists.
- We need to build audiences. Back in the day, one or two of the theatres in Seattle chose a play by a playwright of color, they cast actors of color, mounted the play, and nobody showed up. And then of course, that was the reason they never did it again. If you market only to white people who only like to see shows about other white people, you’re only going to get white people butts in your seats. I never saw a play until I was in my teens. Nobody thought to ask me. And let’s face it, if you have a more diverse audience, you are less likely to go belly up. If you build it, they will come. Hire marketing staff who are from diverse communities.
- Honor diversity funding. A friend of mine and I temporarily brought down a regional theatre in Seattle in the 90’s when we pointed out that a huge portion of their grant money came with stipulations that hiring be diverse. We can see the programs and photos of the homogenous actors and do the math. If you aren’t honoring these commitments, you are actually breaking the law. I would like to point out that there is funding, and thus success, to be found in hiring equality. Funding encouraging diversity exists for a variety of reasons:
• Hiring equality increases class equality
• Diverse representation leads to larger, more diverse audiences
• Diverse perspectives foster organizational strengths
- The unions need to create better programs to attract and retain actors of color. If the unions won’t let us audition, you, as individual theatres, will have to find a way to do it. I know that the union gives priority to people in the union for auditions, but since we are abysmally underrepresented, that leaves actors of color in the cold. Make sure you audition non-Equity actors, and that they proportionately represent our communities. And when actors of color DO get union status, those unions need to make waivers available so they can continue to work. I know many actors, including myself, who had to join a union for one specific job, and then we were prevented from taking non-union paying jobs with roles for actors of color because they were non-union. How does a union that throws up exponentially huge obstacles for people of color to join and then prevents us from taking paid work once we have joined serve us? Or the theatre as a whole?
- Media needs to continue highlighting the problem in positive ways. I came of age as an actor in the days of newspapers. It was obvious to me that the big theatres (doing big, white, classic shows) were on page 1 of the arts section, and the little scrappy, underfunded diverse theatres had a snippet on page 7. Giving airtime to theatres that are not part of the solution isn’t helping. Highlight diversity. Make it a priority in how you choose what plays and theatres and actors to feature and review. It’s been so unbalanced for so long, turn things upside down for a while. Make a theatre’s diversity policies and actions a criterion for front page status. But (and here’s the tricky part) don’t make it look like the problem is solved by never showing white actors. Like a college theatre program brochure that uses pics from that one production of Othello and that other production of The Wiz for 15 years to demonstrate how “diverse” they are.
- Diversity needs to be measured by screen and stage time, not payroll. If you hire a black stage manager, yeah, that’s great, but you don’t get a diversity chip for that. If you hire an actor of color for a one line role and throw the footage on the editing room floor, it doesn’t count. Yeah, she got paid for a day of work, but she won’t get residuals or a credit on IMDB, so it doesn’t matter.
- Recruit from local Shakespeare companies and ethnic theatre companies. Shakespeare, for some reason, doesn’t give a damn about the color of a person’s skin. There are a couple times when a white woman’s baby comes out unexpectedly black (oops) or a man’s dark skin is pointed out specifically, but aside from these few instances, Shakespeare seems to offer a wealth of opportunities for color-blind casting so actors of color tend to gravitate toward classical theatre. There are probably Latinx, African American, and Asian American theatre companies in your city. Know what your local Shakespeare and ethnic theatre companies are up to, and make sure your casting staff goes to see these productions. There’s no excuse for saying that you couldn’t find the right person. Seek, and you shall find.
- Respect the imagination. Sanford Meisner defined acting as, “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.” The audience knows that these circumstances aren’t real. Trust them. They already gave you money to be there, so take them on a ride that includes imaginary circumstances like skin color not being an issue. Frankly, I’ve always wanted to play Blanche Dubois. And if you think an Indian woman knows nothing about living in a post-Civil War world, trying to make ends meet when society gives her very limited ways to do that and judges her when she steps out of bounds, then it’s you who knows nothing. I may be limited and constrained by this practice of casting by color, but really, just wait until you see what you’ve been missing.
What would you say if everyone you loved came back for just one day? Where would you go? What would you do?
Winter’s Tale is a tale of loss and redemption. Historically a winter’s tale was something told by the fireside to entertain and keep the dark shadows at bay. Shakespeare titled his play “THE Winter’s Tale,” presumably, to make known this was the last winter’s tale anyone would ever need. His play has everything one wants in a story and would become the only tale needed for a dark and stormy night. He was right.
Among many things, this play shows the duality of humanity set amid the two extremes of our seasons: winter and summer. Shakespeare starts us in Sicilia in winter, juxtaposing the harsh elements with the joy of the court. We end up in summertime Bohemia, a time of joy and rebirth. A pastoral place filled with whimsy and laughter where anything can happen. I wanted to portray this duality in our casting by doubling our characters. Our company gets the opportunity to delve into all aspects of human nature as they take on two or more contrasting roles.
The Winter’s Tale comes at the end of Shakespeare’s career. He will pen one more masterpiece, The Tempest, before retiring to Stratford-Upon-Avon. We can see the brilliance and complex nature of his poetry in these final plays. He has learned much during his life as an artist. And, as we sit in this theater in 2019, there is still so much we can learn from his poetry. How to forgive, how to live life to the fullest, how to love completely, and how to keep faith no matter “destiny say no.” As an audience, we can find a piece of ourselves in every character on this stage. I invite you to lean into this story. Listen to these words and the emotional storytelling behind them. Come with us, and experience a world where actions may have consequences, but ultimately dreams do come true.
Thank you for supporting live theater and for keeping the arts alive. Enjoy!
Amie Bjorklund
Director, Winter’s Tale
Last year when Titus Andronicus closed, I knew I wanted to direct
another revenge tragedy. Duchess of Malfi was a famous play in its time and is titled a “revenge tragedy,” and I remembered Ferdinand’s powerful “Upon a time” speech from grad school, so I thought of it immediately. We strive to produce plays audiences will be experiencing for the first time alongside Shakespeare’s beloved classics, so it seemed like a great choice.
In re-reading, however, I found it was not a revenge tragedy at all,
but rather a beautiful romance, a heroic tragedy. Compared to
Titus, in which the first death takes place in the first four lines, no
one in Duchess dies until after intermission. And when they do, the
first five deaths are bloodless. (OK, a lot of people die, true, but no
more than in Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet) Duchess is not a story
of revenge, but a story of redemption. It’s not a blood bath, but
a parable about the danger of choosing money above love and
power above empathy.
Perhaps most fascinatingly, it’s a play about a real woman. Duchess Giovanna d’Aragona came into more power, through accident and not desire, then her brothers could climb to with all their conniving and violence. She maintained peace for her people in a time of war, and she loved a man for his character in a culture where titles meant more than virtues. Then, she and her love and their children were all brutally murdered; not for “revenge,” but out of greed and false pride.
In Webster’s version, there is a character who is no more than a
footnote in history: Bosola. But in Webster’s Bosola, we are invited
to understand the pressures of poverty on a man’s moral fortitude and to allow for the possibility of redemption even after the darkest of deeds.
Welcome to Malfi. I hope you enjoy its romance, intrigue… and
touch of madness.
Dawn Tucker
Director, Duchess of Malfi
Right in the middle of William Shakespeare’s career—after he’d toiled for years on wonderful but methodical comedies such as The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew (written in verse, grounded in rigid Italian structure and almost devoid of song) and just before his later period of lyrical, poetic work (filled with music and pulsing with the wit of fools) such as As You Like It and Twelfth Night—he performed a strange experiment. He gave the world a cracking comedy that broke all the rules, was written almost entirely in prose, and was populated by decidedly older characters. The language in this play sounds shockingly contemporary, and the characters that speak it seem to come from our own neighborhoods. Much Ado About Nothing stands by itself as a unique work, not only for having one foot in each of these distinct periods of Shakespeare’s writing, but for being the most accessible, warmest, and funniest comedy he ever penned.
Much Ado About Nothing concerns a community of people starting their lives again after being torn apart by a foreign war. The war that
takes place prior to curtain is presented as necessary and righteous, and I chose for our setting, New Orleans in the summer of 1945, immediately following World War II. While tragic and horrific, the war lives in our national memory as a moral and justified conflict. New Orleans
had an outsized role in that war. It was an embarkation point, with a
massive naval base. The sailors and fishermen of southern Louisiana
were under constant attack by German submarines in the Gulf of
Mexico during the war: hundreds of vessels were attacked and sunk
and thousands of people were pulled from the waters by both military
craft and civilian patrol boats. The people of the city dove headlong into the industrial war effort. Mardi Gras was put on hold for the duration, as the amphibious landing vehicles that were used to turn the tide of war were being designed and built by New Orleanians. The city was chosen as the site for the National World War II Museum for these reasons, and it remains a city challenged by history and geography. Above all, it is a city of beauty, magic, music, and celebration: a lovely parallel to the Messina of Much Ado About Nothing.
Jesse James Kamps
Director, Much Ado About Nothing
Every day, on my way to rehearsal, I drive past the location of Chabad’s future
Molly Blank Jewish Community Center and see hundreds of tinfoil hearts glittering as I go by. I am reminded of the ability of a community to come together in support and love despite the hate and ignorance that somehow still exist
today. Our plan and process for Indecent began long before the disgusting
(inhumane, sad, unconscionable) vandalism at Chabad of Flagstaff, but only after that did I truly understand the urgency of telling this story.
In a community like Flagstaff, it can be easy to mistakenly believe that we are far removed from anti-Semitism and hate crimes. The Flagstaff community needs and deserves theater that inspires empathy and connects us to the human experiences that bring us all together. It is inspiring to see so many
people come together in a moment of need to support the local Jewish community, and I hope we will be embracing, and celebrating, diversity all the time. Our goal when undertaking this journey was to elevate empathy. Through truthful playwriting and the dedicated craft of our skilled actors, I hope you laugh, I hope you cry, and more than anything, I hope you enjoy the show.
Cameron Scully
Director, Indecent
