Bloody Poetry Playbill

Bloody Poetry

a play by

November 28 – December 7, 2013

Howard Brenton

7:30 pm at Timms Centre for the Arts University of Alberta Matinee: December 5 at 12:30 pm

Tickets $11 – $22 At the Timms Centre box office and TIX on the Square www.studiotheatre.ca

Bloody Poetry

a play by

Howard Brenton

Cast Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Shelley Claire Clairmont George, the Lord Byron Dr. William Polidori Harriet Westbrook/her Ghost

Oscar Derkx Merran Carr-Wiggin Zoe Glassman Adam Klassen Braydon Dowler-Coltman Kelsey Visscher

Creative Team Director Set Designer Costume Designer Lighting Designer Composer and Sound Designer

Glenda Stirling Zsofia Opra-Zsabo Zsofia Mocsar Sean McMullen Matthew Skopyk

Assistant Director Assistant to the Set Designer Assistant Costume Designer Assistant to the Costume Designer Assistant to the Lighting Designer Wardrobe Practicum Student

Megan Watson Stephanie Bahniuk Megan Koshka Camille Maltais Travis Metzger Kelsey Plamondon

Dramaturg Voice/Speech/Text Coach Movement Coach

Lauren Hyatt Betty Moulton Marie Nychka

Stage Management Stage Manager Assistant Stage Manager Stage Management Advisor

Kiidra Duhault Joan Wyatt John Raymond

There will be one intermission.

Produced by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc. New York

Contents

4 Director’s Notes 5 Guest Bio • 6, 8 Dramaturgical Notes 9 Mary Mooney Fund • 13 Photos 16 Production Team 20 Staff / Front of House • 22 Donors

Director’s Notes Bloody Poetry is an exploration of the relationships between the Romantic Poets Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont. Though set in the early 19th century, it is nonetheless a thoroughly modern play. Written in 1984 by British playwright Howard Brenton, the play was a response to the landslide Tory victory of 1984, and the rise of conservative Thatcherism.

Freedom – sexual, political, economic, creative and intellectual, is the preoccupation of Shelley and Byron. As they struggle to escape the tyranny of conservative morality, politics, class, and intellectual ideas, they attempt to remake the world and themselves, living a new, Utopian ideal. In their relentless pursuit of this freedom, they live their lives in exile, in poverty, in and out of open relationships, in constant travel, pursued by creditors, government agents and gossip-mongers across Europe. But they write – great, soaring, muscular, passionate poetry that remains alive today. Byron and Shelley write about the ideals of personal and political freedom from intellectual and moral constraint, they write to puncture the smug morality and challenge the satisfied self-portrait of Regency England. Meanwhile the women of the ménage live the reality of that freedom in blood and bone – in endless miscarriages, in constant and exhausting travel, poverty, loss of family, reputation, fortune, children and health. This tension between the personal and the idealogical battle against tyranny is threaded throughout the play. The political becomes the personal; the body, heart and mind become the battlefield, even more viscerally than the blood-soaked landscape of Europe.

Shelley, in the play, rails that while England is immersed in bloody battle on its own soil, while the country is drowning in unemployment and famine following the Napoleonic wars, all anyone wants to talk about is who Bysshe Shelley is sleeping with. Is this any different than having more press time dedicated to the “twerking” of Miley Cirus than to the imprisonment of John Greyson and Tarek Loubani? We have more detailed reports in the press about who politicians are sleeping with than what their foreign and domestic policies are. And we still struggle with the personal price for intellectual, sexual and creative freedom.

I wanted to dive into this play, because it asks what price we pay to live our lives right to the edges of our skin – to take what we want from life, and build the life we want, in the personal, and in the wider world. There is always a price. Who pays it? I hope you go home asking yourself – What is my greatest achievement? What was my greatest risk? What or who did I love the best?

The worst? What was the cost? Who paid it?

Because life is a bloody poetry.

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Guest Artist Bio: Glenda Stirling Glenda is delighted to be back at the University of Alberta, where she completed her B.A. in Drama, and trod the boards of the Timms Stage when it was brand new. Since that time, she has worked her way across the country, directing, choreographing and writing.

She has had the pleasure of working at Ships Company Theatre in Nova Scotia, The Shaw Festival in Ontario and Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary, and many others in between. On the way she has earned an M.F.A. (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and C.M.A. (Certified Movement Analyst, Laban/ Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, NY) and various other certifications.

Glenda is currently the Artistic Director of Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary, where she has been based since 2000. In addition to her work as an artist, Glenda is a dedicated arts educator, teaching in the acting program at Mount Royal University from 2003 – 2013, as well as a sessional and guest artist at The University of Calgary, University of Lethbridge, Keyano, and Red Deer Colleges. Beyond teaching performance techniques, she has taught grant writing, self-producing, dramaturgy, and all kinds of creativity and embodiment in the corporate world. She is passionate about supporting holistic embodiment for performers; focusing on Laban Movement Analysis in actor training in her M.F.A, Laban Movement Analysis as a director and choreographer in her C.M.A. studies, and in her private coaching work with actors, dancers and opera singers.

When not making theatre, Glenda enjoys yoga, ballroom dancing, laughing her head off and trying to get Hamish The Scottish Wonder Dog to do tricks. He thinks shaking anything resembling a rodent to death is trick enough.

Each summer Glenda and her partner in crime, Janet Kwantes, teach an Introduction to Laban Movement Analysis to dancers, actors, body workers and others in Edmonton and Calgary.

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Dramaturgical Notes Lucy Collingwood

You might not associate the early 19th Century, pre-Victorian years with images of debauchery or sexual openness.

In our modern imaginations, we tend to associate this era with restraint and modesty. Howard Brenton’s Bloody Poetry, however, gives us an atypical story of the era. It tells the story of four libertine, privileged, young artists who, in the year 1816, left England for mainland Europe escaping scandal and inciting curiosity and intrigue in the British public.

Brenton’s vision of these literary giants -- Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, and Claire Clairmont -- is anything but stuffy and Victorian.

At the time, Britain and its allies were locked into the War of the Seventh Coalition against Napoleonic France.

Already torn apart by war, Europe suddenly found itself facing widespread famine due to a sudden climate change (dubbed “The Year Without a Summer”) possibly caused by a major volcanic eruption in the Dutch East Indies the year before.

The Victorian Era was just around the corner (1837-1901) with its characteristic restrictive morality and sexual repression. In art and literature, the Romantic movement was in full swing, characterized by vividly emotional and evocative stories and portrayals that were designed to invoke strong sentiment and speak to the heart, rather than the head.

It was in the midst of this literary movement that the Shelleys and Clairmont journeyed to Switzerland, on 6

Claire’s urging, to meet and stay with the great poet Lord George Gordon Byron.

The four of them would go on to develop a relationship that would capture the shocked imaginations of the British public, who delighted in tales of sensationalized debauchery almost as much as they enjoyed these writers’ works.

Byron was already established and highly sought after in the literary world, but had recently fled England to escape a very public scandal that had erupted over his incestuous affair with his half-sister Augusta Leigh, and had travelled to Lake Geneva, Switzerland.

Byron was already known in England for his extravagant lifestyle and rakish attitude, and once jokingly said of himself, “what I earn by my brains, I spend by my bollocks.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley by this time had already published two Gothic novels and a collection of verse. Most radically, however, he had also released a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism, which argued against the existence of God, and made a case for the normalization of atheism.

He was also opposed to the institution of marriage, instead proposing “free love,” the very subversive idea that love and sex should be a matter of free choice, released from obligations in marriage and commitment.

His wife, Mary Shelley, was born Mary Godwin, and was the daughter of famous early feminist writer Mary Woolstonecraft, the author of The Vindication of the Rights of Women.

Continued on pg 8

HARCOURT HOUSE ARTIST RUN CENTRE

HARCOURT HOUSE ARTIST RUN CENTRE

Continued from pg 6

Coming from a radically political background herself, she became attracted to Bysshe when she was sixteen years old.

Claire Clairmont was Mary Shelley’s stepsister. At eighteen years old, she was extremely bright and well read, and fascinated with the works of Lord Byron, and it was she who set up the meeting between the four of them.

We partly know of their time in mainland Europe due to the accounts of Doctor John William Polidori, an acquaintance of Byron’s that travelled with him on his flight from Europe in 1816. Without Byron’s permission, Polidori accepted 500 guineas to publish his account of the trip.

Byron and his companions were in 1816.

It is easy, through their fame, scandal, and the distance of history, to forget this.

Mary Shelley was only sixteen at the time, Clairmont eighteen, and Shelley, only twenty-four. The eldest, Byron, was still only twenty-eight, and their young biographer Polidori, only twenty-one.

For verses and stories of such depth and complexity to come at such an early age is in itself remarkable, but their scandals and misfortunes also seem all the more tragic in light of their youth.

Lord Byron and Percy Shelley were considered by later scholarship to be two of the most important figures of the literary romantic movement.

Shelley went on to pen such classics as Queen Mab (1813), Prometheus Unbound (1818-19) and Epipyschidion (1821), which was a deeply personal examination of the idea and experience of love.

Polidori’s account, though sensationalistic, was an indispensible source of biographical detail for historians. Himself an aspiring writer, Polidori went on to write The Vampyre, a short novella that later influenced Bram Mary Shelley, famously, went on to publish the novel Frankenstein, while Stoker’s Dracula.

Lord Byron wrote prolifically, from Don Juan (1818-1823) to Childe Harold’s It is interesting that, in an era which Pilgrimmage (1812-1818). we tend to associate with puritanical repression and sexual restraint, that such Claire Clairmont, though she had a hedonistic, libertine group of artists aspirations of writing and a burning were travelling Europe and practicing “free love”, a practice which, after many admiration for talented authors, was never published. years of libertine existence and one illegitimate child, Clairmont later came Bloody Poetry examines the strange and to despise. turbulent relationship that emerged “...what evil passion free love assured,” amongst the four of them, and the challenges and outcomes of living a she wrote in her memoir, years later, subversive life in a restrictive society. “what tenderness it dissolves; how The passionate, dark, and often cruel it abused affections that should be group dynamic that emerged is a rare the solace and balm of life, into a and fascinating one. destroying scourge.”

Clairmont’s embittered memories as an older woman looking back on her youth serve to remind us of just how young 8

Mary Mooney Distinguished Visiting Artists’ Fund The Shaw Cable Distinguished Visiting Artists’ Endowment Fund was created by a $100,000 gift from Shaw Communications Inc. The fund annually supports one or more Mary Mooney Distinguished Visiting Artists within the University of Alberta’s Department of Drama. The donation recognizes the late Dr. Mary Mooney, daughter of the Honourable John James Bowlen, Lieutenant Governor of Alberta from 1950 - 1959. Dr. Mooney played an active role in promoting theatre in Edmonton in the years prior to, and following the inception of U of A Studio Theatre in 1949.

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Prognosis: Heartache Set designer: Sean McMullen Costume designer: Hannah Matiachuk Lighting designer: Lee Livingstone

All photos by Ed Ellis 13

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Production Team

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Production Manager: Technical Director: Assistant Technical Director: Production Administrative Assistant:

Gerry van Hezewyk Larry Clark Kim Creller Jonathan Durynek

Wardrobe Manager: Cutter: Wardrobe Practicum Students:

Joanna Johnston Ann Salmonson Rebecca Antonakis Zoe Rod Liza Xenzova

Head Scenic/Stage Carpenter: Scenic Carpenter:

Darrell Cooksey Barbara Hagensen

Head Scenic Painter: Scenic Paint Instructor: Scenic Painters:

Sydney Gross George Griffiths Chris Chelick Jules Labots Camille Maltais Rhys Martin Mattia Poulin Cheyenne Sykes

Properties Master: Properties Assistant:

Jane Kline Jules Labots

Lighting Supervisor: Head of Lighting: Lighting Technicians:

Mel Geary Rhys Martin Jeff Osterlin Morgan Graumann Charlie Lynn Megan Koshka Josée Chartrand

Sound Supervisor:

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Administrative Staff

Kathleen Weiss: Chair, Department of Drama Julie Brown: Assistant Chair Administration David Prestley: Theatre Administrator / Events Coordinator Jonathan Durynek: Box Office Coordinator / Events Assistant Ruth Vander Woude: Graduate Advisor / Chair’s EA Connie Golden: Undergraduate Advisor Helen Baggaley: Administrative Assistant / Office Coordinator With assistance from Faculty of Arts staff: Salena Kitteringham: Fine Arts Communications Lead Terah Jans: Fine Arts Communications Marketing Specialist Joanna Manchur: Fine Arts Recruitment Coordinator

Production Staff

Gerry van Hezewyk: Production Manager / Administrative Professional Officer Larry Clark: Technical Director, Timms Centre for the Arts Darrell Cooksey: Head Carpenter Jonathan Durynek: Production Administrative Assistant Mel Geary: Lighting Supervisor Joanna Johnston: Costume Manager Jane Kline: Property Master Don MacKenzie: Technical Director, Fine Arts Building Ann Salmonson: Cutter Matthew Skopyk: Second Playing Space Coordinator / Sound Supervisor Karen Kucher: Costumer, Fine Arts Building

Front of House

Staff: Bonita Akai, Danielle Dugan, Al Gadowsky, Becky Gormley, Caitlin Gormley, Tasreen Hudson, Marie-Andrée Lachapelle, Laura Norton, Faye Stollery, Cheryl Vandergraaf, Catherine Vielguth Volunteers: Jessy Ardern, Cristian Badiu, Debbie Beaver, Susan Box, Franco Correa, Sarah Culkin, Joan Damkjar, Alana De Melo, Jonathan Durynek, Mary and Gene Ewanyshyn, Terri Gingras, Ron Gleason, Darcy Hoover-Correa, Marie-Andrée Lachapelle, Don Lavigne, Sareeta Lopez, Bronwyn Lucenko, Tom and Gillian McGovern, Marlene Marlj, Conner Meeker, Jennifer Morely, Carmen Nieuwenhuis, Alice Petruk, David Prestley, Leila Raye-Crofton, Jane Voloboeva

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