360° Viewfinder: THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR by Theatre for a New Audience

360Â° SERIES V I E W F I N D E R : FA C T S A N D P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T H E P L AY, P L AY W R I G H T, A N D P R O D U C T I O N

W W W . T FA N A . O R G

TA B L E O F CO N T E N T S The Play 3

A Note from the Director

4 Synopsis 5 Dialogues: Brutus vs. Caesar and the Collapse of the Republic by Richard McCoy 11

Dialogues: Icons and Aftershocks by Tanya Pollard

14 Interview: Flickers of Hope in the Fog of War Shana Cooper in Conversation with Jonathan Kalb

The Playwright 21

Biography: William Shakespeare

The Production 22

Cast and Creative Team

About Theatre For a New Audience 27

Leadership

Mission and Programs

Major Supporters

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is sponsored by Deloitte. Endowment support is provided by The Howard Gilman Foundation Fund for Classic Drama. Additional support for The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is provided by Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. Notes Front Cover: Front cover art by Milton Glaser, Inc. This Viewfinder will be periodically updated with additional information. Last updated March 24, 2019

Credits The Tragedy of Julius Caesar 360Â° | Edited by Soriya K. Chum | Copy-edit and Layout by Peter James Cook Literary Advisor: Jonathan Kalb | Council of Scholars Chair: Ayanna Thompson | Designed by: Milton Glaser, Inc. Copyright 2019 by Theatre for a New Audience. All rights reserved. With the exception of classroom use by teachers and individual personal use, no part of this Viewfinder may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Some materials herein are written especially for our guide. Others are reprinted with permission of their authors or publishers.

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360° VIEWFINDER A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR

democracy reeling from a controversial leadership transition, leaving the very soul of the country at stake. Warring egos, where the difference between a desire to lead and a desire for power has become indistinguishable. A political divide that feels so cavernous and beyond healing that the conversation turns to violence. In our lifetime, the stakes of Julius Caesar have rarely felt so personal, so raw, and so dangerous. In the two years since beginning my journey with this play and an extraordinary company of artists at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, we have experienced escalating hate Shana Cooper, director of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. crimes and rallies, and some of the deadliest gun violence in our nation’s history. While reimagining a new investigation of what it means to govern with our remarkable TFANA ensemble, I am haunted by the undeniable connection in Julius Caesar between a single violent act within a public civic space and the ultimate destruction of a society. From the moment the conspirators in Julius Caesar choose violence, the events of the play essentially unravel into one violent act birthing another. This violence escalates in scale and chaos until even those who were once friends are divided, and the very republic they were fighting to protect has been destroyed. Tragically, even Brutus, a man with integrity and a deep conscience, allows his civic love to be contorted by the conclusion that the only way to oppose a world of tyranny is with the world’s weapons. In Brutus, I see a reflection of our own psychological war, waged daily be-tween the ancestral call to violence for the protection of our country and ideals, and the voice of our souls, which quietly reminds us that there could be a different, more peaceful solution. In Caesar’s Rome, anything from a political rally to an innocent walk down the wrong street can turn deadly with a single flare of a temper. In contemporary America, so many people die annually from gunfire that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 alone eclipses all wars ever fought by the country. Whether this addiction to violence is fueled by political ambition or senseless hate, Julius Caesar demands that we engage in vital conversation about the cost of the relentless cycle of violence that cripples our country: civically, physically, emotionally and spiritually. I watch this story (which ends where it begun, at the conclusion of a civil war) and I think about my young son. And the legacy of violence he has already begun to inherit. “How many times shall this our lofty scene be acted over in states unborn and accents yet unknown?” How many times? - Shana Cooper

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SYNOPSIS

rior to the beginning of Shakespeare’s play, the military commander, Julius Caesar, victorious in the Gallic Wars, has expanded the Roman Republic over all of Gaul (present-day France and Belgium). The Senate, fearful of Caesar’s power, demands he surrender his army and return to Rome. Caesar refuses and marches his forces across the Rubicon into Roman territory which was forbidden. Civil war erupts between Caesar and the Senate supported by Pompey, a Roman General and political leader, with whom Caesar shared an alliance. When Shakespeare’s play begins, Caesar returns to Rome in triumph after conquering Pompey. With the end of civil war, Caesar is celebrated by crowds who adorn his statues regally. Two appalled senators castigate the revelers and set off to strip the statues. During the festival of Lupercal, when young noblemen race madly through the streets and are said to bring fertility to those they touch, Caesar hopes his wife Calphurnia will be touched by the racing Antony. A soothsayer tells Caesar to beware the ides of March. Resentful of Caesar’s seemingly limitless ambition, Cassius approaches Brutus to gauge his feelings. Caska describes to them how Antony three times offered Caesar a crown in public, which he refused but seemed to want. Amid worrisome natural omens, Cassius, Caska and Cinna agree that Caesar must be thwarted in his evident desire to be a king. They hope for Brutus’s support because of his reputation for integrity and arrange to toss a letter into Brutus’s window anonymously calling him to action in the name of a glorious ancestor who expelled the last Roman king and helped establish the Republic. Brutus, alone at night, debates with himself. He has already decided that Caesar must be assassinated when Cassius and the other conspirators arrive, and together they agree to attack Caesar later that day in the Capitol. Cassius wants them also to kill Antony but Brutus objects, saying that would “seem too bloody.” Brutus’s wife Portia, seeing his turmoil, begs to be taken into his confidence about these plans. Calphurnia, citing bad dreams, tries to prevent Caesar’s departure from home. At first he agrees but the conspirator Decius Brutus, appealing to his pride, changes his mind. At the Capitol, the conspirators stab Caesar to death. Antony arrives and pretends sympathy but later makes clear he is outraged and vows to join forces with Octavius, who is near Rome. At Caesar’s funeral, Brutus tersely explains in a speech why Caesar was dangerous, then Antony incites the crowd with reminders of Caesar’s past benevolence and the news that he has left every Roman citizen money in his will. The crowd turns angrily against the conspirators, who flee the city. In the rioting an innocent poet named Cinna is murdered. A new civil war begins. Antony, Octavius and Lepidus order the execution of all those hostile to their cause. Brutus and Cassius argue over the seemingly trivial matter of an officer accepting bribes. After revealing that Portia is dead, Brutus insists over Cassius’s objection that the army meet their opponents at Philippi. The subsequent battle is brutal and chaotic and in the end goes against Brutus and Cassius, who both take their own lives. The victorious Octavius and Antony promise the “noblest Roman” Brutus an honorable burial. In Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra which continues the history begun in Julius Caesar, the Second Triumvirate of Octavius, Antony and Lepidus collapses. Lepidus is exiled. Octavius defeats Antony who commits suicide followed by Cleopatra who also takes her life. The Republic ends and Octavius becomes Emperor of the Roman Empire.

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DIALOGUES BRUTUS VS. CAESAR RICHARD McCOY

Matthew Amendt (Cassius) and Brandon J. Dirden (Marcus Brutus) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

ulius Caesar (1599) is William Shakespeare’s first major tragedy, but a question soon arises: who is the play’s tragic hero? The title character is eliminated by the midpoint. Brutus, by contrast, plays a much larger role and has many more lines. More importantly, he represents a conflicted and anguished killer akin to Hamlet or Macbeth. But as these subsequent tragedies indicate, that raises an additional question: is he genuinely heroic? That was a point of considerable controversy in Shakespeare’s time and our own. In the Inferno, the first book of his Divine Comedy, Dante consigned Brutus and Cassius to the lowest circle of Hell alongside Judas, the apostle who betrayed Christ. Satan chews on this unholy trinity in perpetuity, and Dante deems this the appropriate punishment for such treacherous villainy. [Figure

1]. By contrast, Michelangelo sculpted a bust of Brutus that imparts the same heroic nobility that he ascribes to his David [Figure 2]. A biographer of Michelangelo says that the bust reflects a “heroic scorn for those who would destroy liberty,” and he cites a contemporary who ascribes these sentiments to the artist: “He who kills a tyrant kills not a man but a fierce beast in human form... and so Brutus and Cassius did not commit a sin by killing Caesar.” 1 Shakespeare’s portrait of Brutus is characteristically more ambiguous, as are its politics. The play’s fundamental political conflict involves the fateful transformation of Rome from a senatorial republic to an imperial 1 Charles de Tolnay, Michelangelo: Sculptor, Painter, Architect (translated from French by Gaynor Woodhouse) (Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press: 1975), 63.

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BRUTUS VS. CAESAR AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE REPUBLIC autocracy. When Brutus hears offstage shouts of acclamation, he says “I do fear the people / Choose Caesar for their king” (1.2.789). Shakespeare’s England was, of course, a monarchy; rule by a king, far from being an alien notion, was mandatory. One of his sources was Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, written more than a century after Rome had settled into rule by emperors. Another was Appian’s history of the Civil Wars, also written after those wars were over. The work was translated into English in 1578, and its title page announces that Appian’s history constitutes “an evident

RICHARD McCOY

demonstration that people’s rule must give place and prince’s power prevail." William Fulbecke makes a similar point in his Historical Collection of the Continual Factions, Tumults, and Massacres of the Romans (written in 1586, although not published until 1601) arguing that autocratic rule was preferable to the “tumults and massacres” of civil war. The Pax Romana of the reign of Caesar Augustus finally put an end to these chaotic disputes. Shakespeare may have titled his play Julius Caesar because he did not want to challenge the royalty of his own period. England was a hierarchical society, and his company performed at court under Elizabeth.

Figure 1: Illustration of Canto 34 of Dante's Divine Comedy, Inferno (ca. 1861-68),Gustave Doré. Wikimedia commons.

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BRUTUS VS. CAESAR AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE REPUBLIC Four years later, he would become a member of the King’s Men under King James I when he succeeded the Queen. Later in the seventeenth century, England erupted in its own civil wars. The royalists lost, and the monarch, Charles I, son of James I, was tried and executed in 1649 [Figure 3]. Thomas Hobbes, a royalist exile and tutor to the future Charles II, wrote a defense of royal absolutism called Leviathan [Figure 4]. Among other reactionary measures, he proposed suppressing the study of republican Rome. By contrast, John Milton, a defender of republican rule and an ardent defender of England’s regicide, denounced Caesar because he “tyrannously made himself emperor of the Roman commonwealth” and hailed Brutus as a hero. A century later, the American revolution was inspired by similar republican sentiments. An early performance at Figure 2: The Brutus (ca. 1539-40), Michaelangelo. Wikimedia commons.

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Philadelphia’s Southwark Theatre in June 1770, advertised itself as 'The noble struggles for Liberty by that renowned patriot Marcus Brutus . . . shewing the necessity of his [Caesar’s] death.” In her correspondence with her husband while he was attending the Continental Congress, Abigail Adams adopts the pen name of Portia, Brutus’s courageously resolute wife, implying that John was no less heroic in resisting tyranny. However, this glorification of resistance and rebellion also has its dark side. John Wilkes Booth acted alongside his brothers in a production of the play in 1864, taking the part of Mark Antony while Brutus was played by his brother Edwin [Figure 5]. The next year he assassinated President Lincoln, crying ‘Sic semper tyrannis’ (‘Thus always to tyrants’)— words attributed to the historical Brutus and also the motto of the State of Virginia. He saw his act as a vindication of the lost but noble cause of the Confederacy. Julius Caesar’s fundamental political conflict involves the fateful transformation of Rome from a senatorial republic to an imperial autocracy. The play opens soon after Caesar has defeated Pompey, his main rival and adversary, and entered Rome in military triumph. The first scene shows the tribunes rebuking the commoners for their fickle passions, recalling that these same mobs once hailed Pompey in similar fashion. The tribunes are intent, as defenders of the republic, on preventing Caesar from soaring “above the view of men, / And keep[ing] us all in servile fearfulness” (1.1.756). In the next scene, while Caesar is offered the crown three times by Mark Antony offstage, onstage Cassius tries to enlist Brutus to oppose Caesar’s imperial ambitions. He invokes Brutus’s noble ancestor of the same name: “O, you and I have heard our fathers say / There was a Brutus once that would have brooked [i.e., tolerated] / Th’eternal devil to keep his state [i.e., status] in Rome / As easily as a king” (1.2.157-60). Brutus replies that he would prefer exile and degradation to a mere “villager” to citizenship T H E T R A G E DY O F J U L I U S C A E S A R 7

BRUTUS VS. CAESAR AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE REPUBLIC in such a Rome (1.2.171-2). Another opponent of Caesar joins them to report Caesar’s reluctant refusal of the crown: Caska declares his disgust for the “rabblement [who] hooted, and clapped their chopped hands, and threw up their sweaty nightcaps, and uttered such a deal of stinking breath” that Caesar “swooned and fell down at it” (1.2.243-7). He finds this more ridiculous than pitiful, but “I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air” (1.2.248-9). By contrast, the mob are won over by this display of infirmity. Indeed, “if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less” (1.2.272-4). Brutus is the necessary figurehead for the assassination. As Caska says, “he sits high in all the people’s hearts” / And that which would appear offense in us / His countenance, like richest alchemy, / Will change to virtue and to worthiness” (1.3.157-60). Brutus is more than willing to join their conspiracy, but he joins the assassination plot for an abstract and public good rather than any personal animosity. In his deliberative soliloquy, he concludes “It must be by his death: and for my part / I know no personal cause to spurn at him / But for the general” Below, Figure 3: Etching of the execution of King Charles I (circa 1649), unknown artist. National Portrait Gallery, Reference Collection, NPG D1306 Right, Figure 4: Title-page to Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan( London: Andrew Cooke, 1651), print by Abraham Bosse. British Museum, 1867,1012.510.

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RICHARD McCOY

(2.1.10-12). Caesar’s tyrannical aspirations are also largely hypothetical in Brutus’s mind. His soliloquy is larded with subjunctives like “might” or “may” (2.1.13, 17, 27, 28), but his conclusion is imperative: “And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg / Which hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous, / And kill him in the shell” (2.1.32-4). When he joins in the conspiracy, he is so high-minded that he renounces oaths because their cause is so manifestly noble: “The even virtue of our enterprise” (2.1.32) requires no vows to make it binding. When the others plan to kill Anthony along with Caesar, he renounces further bloodshed: “Let’s be sacrificers but not butchers, Caius. / We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar” (2.1.165-6). He wishes they could annihilate tyranny in the abstract and bloodlessly: “O that we then could come by Caesar’s spirit /

BRUTUS VS. CAESAR AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE REPUBLIC And not dismember Caesar!” Still, he concedes that “alas, Caesar must bleed for it” as a sacrificial offering “fit for the gods” (2.1.168-72). After the assassination of Caesar, the conspirators proclaim their mission accomplished: “Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!” (3.1.78). Brutus commands them to immerse their hands in Caesar’s blood, and Cassius imagines “How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown?” (3.1.11113). This anticipates a performance history of almost infinite recurrence, one that stretches from Shakespeare’s time on the Globe’s stage to our own at Polonsky Shakespeare Center—and beyond. Antony says he is prepared to die, but Brutus insists on sparing him, even giving him a chance to speak at Caesar’s funeral despite Cassius’s apprehensions. In the pivotal third act, Brutus and Antony face off in the Forum. Brutus proclaims that his motives were the purest: “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more” (3.2.21-2). He mourns Caesar and sheds “tears, for his love” (3.2.27). At the same time, he welcomes his “death, for his ambition” (3.2.28). The crowd eats this up and declares “Caesar was a tyrant” and “We are blest that Rome is rid of him” (3.2.69-71). But then Antony delivers one of Shakespeare’s most renowned speeches. He slyly undercuts Brutus’s claims that Caesar was ambitious by reminding the crowd that Caesar thrice refused the crown that Antony offered him. He pays tribute to Brutus and his co-conspirators as “honorable men” throughout his speech but that compliment grows more ironic as he proceeds. And when he gets to the will with its generous bequests to the general populace, the mob fiercely turns on the senatorial conspirators. After they exit with Caesar’s body, Antony cynically gloats over this chaotic reversal: “Mischief, thou art afoot” / Take what course thou wilt” (3.2.251-2).

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surrenders his tactical advantages by meeting Octavius and Antony in battle. Octavius is elated: “Now, Antony, our hopes are answered. / You said the enemy would not come down, / But keep the hills and upper regions. / It proves not so: their battles are at hand” 95.1.1-4). Cassius commits suicide and Brutus falls on his sword in the final act. Brutus insists that “I shall have glory by this losing day / More than Octavius and Mark Antony / By this vile conquest shall attain unto” (5.5.368). But the jury remains out on the assessment of his reputation. Antony delivers a magnanimous – and posthumous – epitaph to Brutus, proclaiming him “the noblest Roman of them all” and adding that “He only” was motivated by “a general honest thought” of “common good to all” (5.5.6973). But Octavius, the ultimate victor, slightly qualifies that, proposing, “According to his virtue let us use him” (5.5.76). Octavius has more practical concerns expressed in the last line of the play. He proposes “let’s away, / To part the glories of this happy day” (5.5.80). Octavius will Figure 6: "Booth brothers in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar" (1864). Lincoln Graphics. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https:// repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:70132/

In the final encounter of these adversaries at the battle of Philippi, Brutus again perversely T H E T R A G E DY O F J U L I U S C A E S A R 9

BRUTUS VS. CAESAR AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE REPUBLIC ultimately triumph as the first Caesar Augustus, and the Roman republic will give way to empire and one-man rule.

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required for political efficacy. Opposing tyranny and demagoguery requires careful and astute planning and ingenious tactical acumen—an urgent message then and now. •

Julius Caesar and its depiction of the collapse of RICHARD McCOY is a Distinguished Professor of English at a republic under the pressures of autocracy and Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of demagoguery have acquired a new urgency in our four books — Sir Philip Sidney: Rebellion in Arcadia (Rutgers, 1979), own time. Among other recent works, Michael The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Tomasky’s If We Can Keep It addresses threats Chivalry (California, 1989), Alterations of State: Sacred Kingship in to the separation of powers by an increasingly the English Reformation (Columbia, 2002), and Faith in Shakespeare autocratic president and polarized electorate. (Oxford, 2014) — as well as many articles on Shakespeare’s plays. He takes his title from an exchange between He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Benjamin Franklin and a lady on the final day of American Council for Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and The the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia Huntington Library. He has also served as a speaker and consultant in 1787. When asked “What have we got—a for Shakespeare performances for the Royal Shakespeare Company, republic or a monarchy?” Franklin responded, Canada’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Classic Stage Company, “A republic, if you can keep it.” 1 This suggests Target Margin, The Public Theater, and The Shakespeare Society as just how precarious our grip on our own political well as Theatre for a New Audience. institutions and norms might be, amplifying the Matthew Amendt (Cassius) and Brandon J. Dirden (Marcus Brutus) contemporary resonance of this play. Stephen in Theatre for a New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY OF Greenblatt addresses these same pressing concerns JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Photo by Gerry Goodstein. after an “election that confirmed my worst fears” in his recent book on tyranny and Shakespeare’s politics. 2 He writes that Julius Caesar presents “an unprecedented representation of political uncertainty, confusion, and blindness. The attempt to avert a possible constitutional crisis, were Caesar to decide to assume tyrannical powers, precipitates the collapse of the state. The very act that was meant to save the republic turns out to destroy it. Caesar is dead, but by the end of the play Caesarism is triumphant.” 3 Shakespeare will return to Rome’s ancient state in his last tragedy, Coriolanus (1608), thus ending where he began. He finds there a distant mirror of politics in his own time and our own. Brutus is a far more sympathetic character than the ferocious warrior of the later play, but, like Coriolanus, “His nature is too noble for the world” (3.1.257). That may be the source of their shared tragic flaw: a principled sense of one’s own integrity may preclude the practical worldliness and cunning 1 Michael Tomasky, If We Can Keep It: How the Republic Collapsed and How It Might Be Saved (New York: Norton, 2019). (xxvii). 2 Stephen Greenblatt, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics (New York: Norton, 2018), 191. 3 Greenblatt, 154

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DIALOGUES

ICONS AND AFTERSHOCKS

TANYA POLLARD

ow do we bring back the dead, and to what ends? Theater offers a privileged site for resurrecting fraught historical figures and unleashing their ambivalent legacies into new settings. By the time Shakespeare dramatized Julius Caesar in 1599, he had already animated a series of controversial kings in his English history plays, but Roman rulers carried different meanings and consequences. Caesar, whose name provides the etymological root of Kaiser, Czar, and Tsar, offered an epitome of power in its starkest form, and his ghost hovered ominously behind Elizabethan England’s expanding imperial ambitions. As an icon of the Roman republic and its collapse into Civil War, Caesar had long haunted early modern theaters. Shakespeare’s tragedy joined a crowded field of plays with titles such as Caesar’s Fall, Caesar and Pompey, and Caesar’s Revenge. If, as seems likely, Julius Caesar was the first play staged in Shakespeare’s new Globe Theater for its 1599 opening, Shakespeare’s decision to inaugurate this space with a legendary story of Roman catastrophe suggests Caesar’s resonance for representing the ending of an era, and the start of a new one. Endings and beginnings loom large in Shakespeare’s engagement with Caesar. Many playwrights staged his battles and intrigues, but throughout his plays Shakespeare repeatedly turned his attention to the moment of Caesar’s death. If Caesar’s life represented the dangers of extreme power, his assassination by an intimate friend offered a shorthand for a kind of original sin. In Henry VI, Part Two (1590-91), Suffolk invites his captors to “show what cruelty ye can” by recalling how “Brutus’ bastard hand/ Stabbed Julius Caesar.” Similarly, in Henry VI, Part Three (1590-91), Queen Margaret underscores the horror of her son’s death by comparing it to Caesar’s: “They that stabbed Caesar shed no blood at all,” she insists, “Did not offend, nor were not worthy blame,/ If this foul deed were by to equal it.” Killing Caesar, in these accounts, represents the capacity to harden the heart. In

Ted Deasy (Metellus Cimber), Brandon J. Dirden (Marcus Brutus), and Rocco Sisto (Julius Caesar) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

the concentrated force of its cruelty, moreover, it becomes a yardstick by which to measure future moments of moral catastrophe. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare not only places Caesar’s murder at the center of the play, but pauses to imagine it reverberating through future theatrical afterlives. Cassius wonders, “How many ages hence/ Shall this our lofty scene be acted over/ In states unborn and accents yet unknown?,” and Brutus echoes, “How many times shall Caesar bleed in sport?” Although they describe the play in which they act, the scene of Caesar’s murder went on to haunt Shakespeare’s plays after Julius Caesar as well. In Hamlet (1600), Polonius’s announcement of the players’ T H E T R A G E DY O F J U L I U S C A E S A R 11

ICONS AND AFTERSHOCKS: RESURRECTING CAESAR ONSTAGE TANYA POLLARD arrival prompts him to recall his own earlier theatrical experience. “I did enact Julius Caesar,” he explains; “I was killed in the Capitol; Brutus killed me,” to which Hamlet replies, “’Twas a brute part to kill so capital a calf.” As critics have observed, the allusion offers a wry metatheatrical foreshadowing. Shakespeare’s plays were all performed by the same company of actors, and John Heminges, who played Polonius, had played Caesar the previous season and been stabbed by Richard Burbage, who played Brutus; shortly after these words, Heminges, as Polonius, would be again stabbed by Burbage, as Hamlet. Hamlet’s punning repartee is witty, and the inside joke would have delighted original Globe audiences, but it also underscores a dark repetition at the heart of Shakespeare’s plays. Burbage’s character repeatedly catches Heminges’s character off guard with a sudden brutal attack, physical and/or emotional, after earlier apparent closeness. When Burbage’s Prince Hal, after his coronation in Henry IV, Part Two (1597-98), greeted Heminges’s

eagerly waiting Falstaff with the chilly lines, “I know thee not, old man,” the audience would have seen another version of this betrayal. Shakespeare’s replays of this primal scene underscore his particular interest in Brutus, whose conflicted decision to join the conspiracy marks the crucial turning point in spurring the play’s climactic violence. Although Caesar’s name provides the play’s title, Brutus speaks four times as many lines as Caesar does, and his densely introspective soliloquies anticipate the brooding interiority that would go on to characterize Hamlet and many of Burbage’s other famous characters. In Henry V, a constable similarly turns to Brutus to describe King Henry V, another of Burbage’s roles. Chiding the French Dauphin for misreading the English king, he insists that surface traits show “but the outside of the Roman Brutus,/ Covering discretion with a coat of folly;/ As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots/ That shall first spring and be most delicate.” Brutus— like these hidden roots, and like both Hamlet

Stephen Michael Spencer (Caska), Ted Deasy (Metellus Cimber), and Rocco Sisto (Julius Caesar) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

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ICONS AND AFTERSHOCKS: RESURRECTING CAESAR ONSTAGE TANYA POLLARD and Henry V—is secretive, self-enclosed, and potentially dangerous. He is not straightforwardly a villain. Throughout Julius Caesar the recurring epithets for Brutus are good, gentle, noble, wise, and honorable, and no one other than Mark Antony uses these words in irony. Instead, they highlight the terrible vulnerability of a serious and complex mind, troubled by genuine concerns, to the attractions of an apparently conclusive violence, whose unforeseen aftershocks will turn the world upside down.

queen for over four decades, was aging without an heir, and a few short years later, she would die, ending the Elizabethan era and inaugurating the new realm of James I. These same ghosts now bring their combustible charge to the different uneasy terrain of twenty-first century New York, where they encounter other crises and transitions. Caesar will again bleed in sport, and we will again enter a conversation with the ghosts of Brutus, Burbage, and Shakespeare about what we can do with their aftershocks. •

If Caesar’s ghost embodied the will to power that haunted Elizabethan political ventures, Brutus’s ghost suggests a distinctive kind of theatrical electricity: an ambivalent mixture of moral complexity, intellectual magnetism, and susceptibility to violent takeover, for which Shakespeare’s leading actor seems to have had a special affinity. Whether Plutarch’s account of Brutus’s ambivalence led Shakespeare to develop Burbage’s signature persona, or Burbage’s dark theatrical charisma led the playwright’s imagination to Brutus, tracing Brutus’s ghost through Shakespeare’s dramatic development highlights a rich ongoing conversation between playwright, actor, and historical figure about what tragedy is and can do. In particular, Shakespeare’s recurring fascination with Caesar’s murder suggests that the theater can activate iconic catastrophes of the past in order to probe, confront, and challenge their recurrences.

TANYA POLLARD is Professor of English at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her books include Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages (2017), Drugs and Theater in Early Modern England (2005), and Shakespeare’s Theater: A Sourcebook (2003). She has co-edited Reader in Tragedy (2019) with Marcus Nevitt; Homer and Greek Tragedy in Early Modern England’s Theaters (2017) and Milton, Drama, and Greek Texts (2016) with Tania Demetriou; and Shakespearean Sensations: Experiencing Literature in Early Modern England (2013) with Katharine Craik. A former Rhodes Scholar, she has received fellowships from the NEH, Whiting, and Mellon foundations and the Warburg Institute.

Benjamin Bonenfant (Octavius) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

“Why all these gliding ghosts?,” Cassius asks Caska early in Julius Caesar. Answering his own question, he continues, “Why, you shall find/ That heaven hath infused them with these spirits,/ To make them instruments of fear and warning/ Unto some monstrous state.” Ghosts prove combustible catalysts in Shakespeare’s plays, prompting unpredictable and uncontrollable events. Plays that bring back the dead do the same, and reviving them can similarly incite crisis and controversy. In 1599 Shakespeare revived the ghosts of Caesar, Brutus, and raging Roman mobs for London audiences hovering uneasily on the cusp of an enormous transition; Elizabeth I, T H E T R A G E DY O F J U L I U S C A E S A R 13

INTERVIEW

FLICKERS OF HOPE IN THE FOG OF WAR

SHANA COOPER IN CONVERSATION WITH JONATHAN KALB

Galen Molk (Cinna the Poet) and Citizens of Rome in Theatre for a New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

On a break from rehearsals for Julius Caesar, production dramaturg and TFANA Resident Literary Advisor Jonathan Kalb spoke with director Shana Cooper. JONATHAN KALB Let’s start with the big question:

why do Julius Caesar now? At the first rehearsal you told the company that you feel the stakes of the play right now are “raw, personal and dangerous.” SHANA COOPER One of the fundamental

questions of Julius Caesar is, how do we govern? And what is the cost of governing through violence? I think those are the questions of our moment. We’re obviously in conflict over those questions, in such a volatile space right now in this country. It feels like, depending on how we find our way through the storm, the outcome could easily turn to violence. JONATHAN KALB How has the context for this

production changed since you directed it in 14

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Oregon in the runup to the 2016 election? SHANA COOPER I feel like the stakes have just

exploded, because of the way violence, as a disease in our culture, has continued to spread since the 2016 election. Statistically, there’s been an escalation in hate crimes and mass shootings. It feels like this disease of violence has been given permission to thrive and is overtaking our culture and creating a volatile context for the decisions to be made in 2020. We will be asking then, “How do we as a community find our way back towards each other?” after coming from opposite sides of a dividing line with a gulf of violent disagreement between us. Our votes are going to count more than they ever have before in terms of what the future of the country becomes. The soul of the country is at stake. JONATHAN KALB Can you talk more

specifically about the politics that drive the

INTERVIEW: SHANA COOPER violence? Violent choices stem from specific provocations—responses to, say, corrupt and venal public figures, or perceived betrayals of national principles. SHANA COOPER I think the specific nature of our

current government haunts this play, because it is a play about what it means to govern. There’s no way to see and hear the play separate from the reality of our own political systems. The play invites us to set it in a time and space that feels in some way mythic, connected to all time, and yet also connected to our current time. One of the fascinating things about it is that its characters are so complex, as our public figures are. In a sense, there’s no protagonist. Even Brutus, who seems to be the protagonist and who can be seen as a hero, is incredibly flawed. He’s a leader and everyone talks about what an honorable man he is, full of integrity, but he makes mistake after mistake in how he launches this revolution. Shakespeare is bringing forward men who have tremendous leadership capacity within them while also revealing them as deeply flawed human beings. That’s what makes this such a richly human play, not purely a political journey. JONATHAN KALB The play is called The Tragedy

of Julius Caesar. Yet you and others have pointed out that Brutus feels more like the protagonist. Might the society be the protagonist? Could it be the tragedy of a society? SHANA COOPER Yes. It does feel like Rome is

both the protagonist and the deepest loss. Rome as a republic is set on fire in this play, and that feels like the death that is the most tragic. JONATHAN KALB How do you handle that

situation as a director—a story that is as much about the fate and choices of a society as it is about individuals? SHANA COOPER The presence of the citizens

in the play is crucial. That’s where Shakespeare really gives us the community, as a group of characters. I think it’s significant that they are called citizens. They are a group, not individual

JONATHAN KALB

characters. They are choric. And the culmination of their journey is when they become an angry mob and murder an innocent man, Cinna the poet. In that trajectory from a group of citizens celebrating fertility in the Lupercalia festival to a group of citizens that has transformed in an angry, murderous mob, Shakespeare takes us through the devolution of the society. And the great tragedy of that journey is the cost to their soul. It’s not that all of those citizens die. It’s that they allow themselves to be contorted by the disease of violence, which leads to the destruction of Rome. That’s why the killing of Cinna the poet is one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the play. JONATHAN KALB You use it as the first act curtain. SHANA COOPER Yes. Often the intermission falls

after the “Friends, Romans, countrymen” oration, which along with the earlier “let slip the dogs of war” speech launches the second half of the play, which is the civil war. But I think there’s an undeniable connection between the single act of violence that is the assassination and the way that, through inflammatory political rhetoric, the mob becomes volatile and murders an innocent man. I think it’s helpful to see those scenes side by side instead of separating them by intermission. JONATHAN KALB Can you say more about the

play’s structural split? SHANA COOPER Yes. The first two-thirds of

the play is tightly and exquisitely structured. After Cinna the poet, the rest of the play is an explosion of war. A million new characters you’ve never met are introduced, the people fighting this war, the senators setting it in motion. You’re suddenly on the battlefield instead of within the city of Rome. There’s a chaos and fragmented structuring. It’s as if the dramaturgy and language break down as the violence takes over. And we’ve tried to find a theatrical language that can mirror that dramaturgy. JONATHAN KALB How do you see Caesar’s drive

for power? Is it primarily a matter of ego? The one T H E T R A G E DY O F J U L I U S C A E S A R 15

INTERVIEW: SHANA COOPER speech on a public issue Caesar has before he’s killed is harsh. He denies mercy to Publius Cimber. SHANA COOPER Denying mercy for Publius

Cimber is a declaration of his constancy, his singular constancy as a leader. The language he uses there does suggest an amount of ego: he says he’s “constant as the Northern Star.” He does want the crown. The crown is the thing that leads to his decision to go against the signs of nature, and the gods, and his own wife—to go to the Senate on the day he gets killed. To that degree Caesar is a tyrant, a figure of enormous ego who is determined to achieve a height of power. But the other fascinating aspect of him is his frailties, that he can’t hear out of one ear, that he has epilepsy, that his marriage is a barren one. Who knows whose fault that is? So there is a sense of undeniable mortality nipping at his heels.

JONATHAN KALB

loves. He spends the rest of his life haunted by that decision. I don’t know that that means he’s dishonorable. But there’s a great cost. It costs him everything. The first part of the play feels like an examination of his crucial moments of choice, and the consequences of those choices. The play follows Brutus moment by moment, his vacillation and debate with himself. He’s wrestling with his soul, and then once the choice is made, the play is the story of the consequences. JONATHAN KALB How do you see the Brutus-

Portia marriage? SHANA COOPER I love both the marriages in

also important to that counter-view you describe.

this play, because I think that as flawed as they are—these husbands are having trouble listening to their wives, revealing themselves fully to their wives—they actually feel like two happy marriages. Two marriages in which people really love each other. It’s extremely rare in Shakespeare to see one marriage where people love each other, let alone

SHANA COOPER Yeah. The thing that converts

Below: Tiffany Rachelle Stewart (Calphurnia) and Rocco Sisto (Julius Caesar).

JONATHAN KALB His relationship with Calpurnia is

him, temporarily, from his determination to go to the Senate is when she says, “Lay it on me.” Calpurnia says, “You can say it was my fault. I was worried about you.” I think there’s something fascinating about that relationship, this woman who can say, “I know you need this to not be about your own fear. Make it about mine.” JONATHAN KALB The conspirator Decius Brutus

doesn’t have to work very hard to change Caesar’s mind again. SHANA COOPER That’s right. All he has to do

is talk about the crown. I mean, he reinterprets the dream, and the crux of his interpretation is, “Today they mean to offer you a crown.” That seals the deal. JONATHAN KALB And Brutus? How do you see him?

Does the choice of violence make Brutus dishonorable? SHANA COOPER I don’t have a clear answer to

that question. The choice to use violence does lead Brutus to lose everything and everyone he 16

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W AU D I E N C E 36 0 ° S E R I E S

Opposite page: Julian Remulla (Lucius) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Photos by Gerry Goodstein.

INTERVIEW: SHANA COOPER

JONATHAN KALB

two. The wives in this play seem to be arguing for these men to listen to their deepest selves and to reveal those selves to their spouses. Brutus spends the whole orchard scene pulled between what the conspirators are offering and Portia’s entreaty to “share yourself with me, reveal yourself to me.” I’ve always wondered whether, if he had done that, if the rest of the play would happen.

a villain. I don’t think Brutus would join Cassius in this fight if he were coming from a purely selfish place. Cassius has a rash temper and he holds grudges. But he’s a great patriot.

JONATHAN KALB How do you see Cassius?

exists between Brutus and Cassius, and between all of the men in their army, is deep. That’s a powerful and moving side of the masculinity that drives the action of this play.

SHANA COOPER Lately what’s been breaking open

for me is the complexity of Cassius. I’ve been thinking about his vulnerability, what it is to be someone who believes so strongly in the ideals of your country that you would plan an assassination. Plan it when you know you are not the person people look to as a leader, not the man who can actually lead your countrymen into battle. What’s fascinating about Cassius is his love for Rome, even though it’s also coupled with a great personal vendetta against Caesar. Shakespeare’s not giving us

JONATHAN KALB He also proves capable of real

friendship with Brutus, when they resolve their fight. SHANA COOPER Yes. The friendship and love that

JONATHAN KALB Is that a glimmer of hope in

the story? SHANA COOPER Yes. I see flickers of hope in a

character like Lucius, whose name means light. He appears often for Brutus in moments where Brutus is looking for a haven from the storm. In our production, Lucius does join the fight by the end of the play, but the light he brings into the first

T H E T R A G E DY O F J U L I U S C A E S A R 17

INTERVIEW: SHANA COOPER third of the action speaks to a kind of hope for me. Another character like this is Artemidorus, who is a young woman in our production. The fact that she takes the risk to warn Caesar, and defends that choice, performing a dangerous political act—that to me is one of the most hopeful moments in the play. If we could have young people who do that, then it feels like, even though this journey ends with tyranny and the cycle of violence escalating, there might be hope for a different future.

JONATHAN KALB

JONATHAN KALB You’re the mother of a four-year-old. SHANA COOPER I am, yes. And I need optimism in

order to survive right now. JONATHAN KALB Can I ask you about the changes

you’ve made to Act 5? It’s somewhat different from the original text. Can you describe your intentions there? SHANA COOPER Sure. Act 5 is a civil war. They’re

Marc Antony’s speech over Brutus’s dead body, in which he acknowledges the integrity of his enemy. The burying of Brutus does feel hopeful to me. It feels like the first step towards reconciliation—being able to acknowledge integrity and honor in our opponents.

on the battlefield, people are running on and off, countless are getting killed. Then there are these little moments, intimate scenes between soldiers. Those are the scenes that I’ve kept. I’ve stripped away a lot of the layers where Shakespeare tries to create the feeling of a civil war through language. I’ve replaced that text with a physical vocabulary for the violence. I think of Act 5 as a collage, a collage of these incredibly intimate battlefield scenes and a physical mirage of what it feels like to be in the fog of war.

JONATHAN KALB Even if it’s also PR for the victors.

JONATHAN KALB In your production Lucius helps

JONATHAN KALB We can’t help knowing that

Octavius will become emperor. SHANA COOPER Yes, but the play ends with

SHANA COOPER I’m gonna choose the optimistic

view. I think I need to for my child.

Brutus kill himself, not Strato. SHANA COOPER That’s because I feel like we

This page and opposite: The company of Theatre for a New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Photos by Gerry Goodstein.

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W AU D I E N C E 36 0 ° S E R I E S

INTERVIEW: SHANA COOPER

JONATHAN KALB

get to know Lucius in the first part of the play as the innocent side of Brutus, the purer side of conscience. And it felt powerful to watch them go through the war together.

JONATHAN KALB Yet it feels just as violent as if

JONATHAN KALB How did the choreography for

these solo journeys you start to feel the isolation and loneliness of combat in a way. There’s great community in combat but there’s also the reality that when it is you against an opponent, you are on your own. In our scenes, we’re able to see the way this violence is landing on them individually. We get to witness that cost in their faces, in the exhaustion of their bodies. And through the power of these actors as an ensemble, we get a sense of the mythic scale of the event.

the battle scenes arise? SHANA COOPER I worked with both a movement

choreographer and a fight choreographer, Erika Chong Shuch and Jonathan Toppo, to create a language that is part martial arts, part stage combat, part dance. The impulse behind that was taking some realistic gestures of violence that exist in the play, namely stabbing—which happens as part of the assassination—and carrying it forward into the battle. But we do it in a way that repeats and warps, and through repetition evolves in meaning. This more mythic vocabulary expresses the cost of the violence, not just physically but spiritually and emotionally as well. JONATHAN KALB I found it especially moving that

many of the movements are made without opponents. SHANA COOPER Yes. A solo practice.

opponents were there and being stabbed, if not more so. SHANA COOPER Right. When the actors are on

JONATHAN KALB Can you talk about the masks in

the production? SHANA COOPER Yes. The masks are connected to

the citizens. The citizens are a choric gesture from Shakespeare, a community. The masks embrace that idea of a chorus. They also felt useful in igniting the experience of Lupercalia, which is this fertility festival that launches the play.

T H E T R A G E DY O F J U L I U S C A E S A R 19

INTERVIEW: SHANA COOPER Raquel, our costume designer, is from Brazil, and she grew up with the experience of wild festivals like Lupercalia—and understands intimately the ferocity, sexuality and mystery of them. Masks and headdresses are part of the costumes for those festivals and they felt like an exciting way to bring those textures into the first scenes. After that, the masks are adopted by the citizens as part of their political revolt. They reappear at the end of the first half as part of the protest of Caesar’s assassination, a feature of the enraged mob. JONATHAN KALB Is a masked mob more menacing

for you than a group of individuals? SHANA COOPER Masks provide anonymity. I think

that’s sometimes why masks are adopted, because they provide anonymity and thus permission for violent mob mentality. There’s something fascinatingly theatrical about images of political revolt when people are wearing masks. The way these violent acts are played out again and again on the stages of our nations is theatrical. Shakespeare is where the theater of politics and the theater of art collide. I think masks can be a bridge. They bring a sense of menace that you would not have if you got to see the humanity behind them. The masks suffocate that humanity. JONATHAN KALB Just one more question—

about the supernatural. How do you imagine us understanding what the supernatural is in a production of this play in 2019? SHANA COOPER This play is haunted, without

a doubt. It’s haunted in the language and the events. There are ghosts and omens everywhere. We can relate to that. The recent wildfires in California, for instance, felt like a disturbance in nature, a portent. Barrett O’Brien, who plays Decius in our production, was in New Orleans during Katrina and he was telling us about the graves being upturned there after the storm, coffins floating through the streets, and the animals being let out of the zoo. In New Orleans in our recent lifetime “portents” like “Graves hath yawned and overturned their dead” and “a 20

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W AU D I E N C E 36 0 ° S E R I E S

JONATHAN KALB

lioness hath whelped in the streets” were not even supernatural but actual. JONATHAN KALB Those examples are about

reasonable people getting a whiff of the metaphysical. But are we meant to believe the gods are actually present in the play? And if so, what do they want? SHANA COOPER I think it’s all about perception

and interpretation. I don’t think that Shakespeare answers those questions in this play. He provides a lot of forceful signs, and then it’s up to the human beings to interpret them. It’s through those choices that our civilizations rise and fall. • This interview has been edited and condensed. JONATHAN KALB (Dramaturg, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar) is Professor of Theater at Hunter College and Resident Dramaturg for TFANA. A well-known theater critic and scholar, he is the creator and moderator of TheaterMatters: An Artists and Critics Review Panel, a free public-event series at The Invisible Dog Art Center (www.theatermatters.net). He writes frequently about theater on his TheaterMatters blog (www.jonathankalb.com).

Michelle Hurst (Soothsayer) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Illustration by Milton Glaser.

THE PLAY WRIGHT

he most celebrated and widely produced of the world’s great playwrights, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born and raised in the small country town of Stratford-upon-Avon, where his parents were prominent citizens, though his father, a tanner and glove-maker, seems to have suffered financial reverses around the time young William’s formal education apparently ceased in 1577. He married a local girl, Anne Hathaway, in 1582, and over the next decade the marriage produced three children. Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, died at age 11, in 1596; his daughters Judith and Susanna survived him. How and why Shakespeare entered the theatrical profession is unclear. He seems to have come to London in the late 1580s, and quickly made himself indispensable as a reviser of old plays and a supplier of new ones. By 1594, he had become a shareholder, along with the prominent actor Richard Burbage and the latter’s business-manager brother, Cuthbert, in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, one of the dominant theatre companies of its day, popular with the public and frequently in demand for performances at Queen Elizabeth’s court. In the reign of her successor, King James I, the troupe was officially taken under royal protection and became the King’s Men. While he appeared regularly in works by others, Shakespeare’s principal function seems to have been turning out new plays for his companies. Working in all the standard genres of the time—tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and episodes from British history—he rapidly developed both remarkable expertise and a startlingly individual, innovative style. Shakespeare retired from the King’s Men around 1612, spending the last years of his life with his family in Stratford, where he died in 1616. His plays have never been off the stage. Theatres return to them time and again for their brilliant storytelling, theatrical excitement, incisive character expression and memorably intense poetry. To this day, Shakespeare is still the most performed, translated, adapted, quoted, analyzed and discussed author in the entire history of dramatic literature. Figures from his plays like Hamlet, Falstaff, Lear, Macbeth, Rosalind, Viola, Shylock, Prospero, and Duke Vincentio have virtually taken on an independent existence in the world. T H E T R A G E DY O F J U L I U S C A E S A R 21

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM SHANA COOPER (Director) is an assistant professor at

Northwestern University (Directing M.F.A. program) and a company member at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Directing credits: Yale Rep, Woolly Mammoth, A.C.T. (SF), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Rep, Hudson Valley Shakespeare, Studio Theater and California Shakespeare Theater. Shana was the Associate Artistic Director of the California Shakespeare Theater (2000-2004), and Cofounder of New Theater House with Yale School of Drama alumni (2008-present). Awards: 2014 Leadership U Grant – Funded by The Melon Foundation and Administered by TCG, 2010 Princess Grace Award, Drama League Directing Fellow. Upcoming projects: Indecent by Paula Vogel at OSF, Ibsen’s Lady From the Sea at The Court (Chicago) and the inaugural season of The Coop in NYC. MFA, Yale School of Drama. www.shanacooper.com RAQUEL BARRETO (Costume Designer) is a Los Angeles-

based designer working in theater, dance and opera. Her designs have been on stage at the Guthrie Theater, Denver Tiffany Rachelle Stewart (Calphurnia) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY Center, Arena Stage, Berkeley Repertory, Actors Theater of OF JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Louisville, Portland Center Stage, The Folger Theater, Syracuse Photo by Gerry Goodstein. Stage, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Mark Taper Forum, California Shakespeare Theater, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cornerstone, Magic Theatre, Latino Theater Co, Jacob’s Pillow, and many others. Raquel is a native of Brazil and teaches costume design at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and TV. www.raquelbarreto.com SIBYL WICKERSHEIMER (Set Designer) Regional: Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Oregon Shakespeare

Festival, American Conservatory Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, Lookingglass Theatre Company, Portland Center Stage, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Center Theatre Group, South Coast Repertory, Geffen Playhouse. Sibyl is an Associate Professor at USC in the School of Dramatic Arts. Her designs will be displayed in the US exhibit at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. CHRISTOPHER AKERLIND (Lighting Designer) Over 600 productions at theater, opera, and dance companies

in the US and around the world. For TFANA: Waste, King John, Don Juan, Cymbeline, Pericles, The Ohio State Murders, Orpheus X. Recently: Merrily We Roll Along (Laura Pels/Roundabout), Katya Kabanova (Scottish Opera), Roberto Devereux (San Francisco Opera), Time and the Conways (Broadway/Roundabout). SHANE SCHNETZLER (Production Stage Manager) TFANA: The Emperor, Heart/ Box, The Two Gentlemen of

Verona, Tamburlaine, Cymbeline. Off-Broadway: Noura, This Flat Earth, The Profane, Rancho Viejo, Familiar (Playwrights Horizons); Napoli, Brooklyn, Look Back in Anger (Roundabout); The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, The Comedy of Errors (NYSF); Detroit ’67 (Public); Night is a Room, The Liquid Plain, The Old Friends (Signature); Red Dog Howls (NYTW); Uncle Vanya (Soho Rep); The Scottsboro Boys (Vineyard). ERIKA CHONG SHUCH (Choreographer) Erika Chong Shuch choreographs for companies such as Oregon

Shakespeare Festival, Folger Theater, Hudson Valley Shakespeare, Kennedy Center, American Conservatory Theater, Playmakers Rep, California Shakespeare Festival, Magic Theatre, Arena Stage, Kansas City Rep and Pittsburgh Public. As a performance maker, Erika’s recent work includes For You (a Creative Capital 22

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W AU D I E N C E 36 0 ° S E R I E S

THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

Project), a series of intimate performances for audiences of 12, and TheaterTheater, a participatory morality play exploring the hidden forces underlying everyday ethical choices. www.erikachongshuch.org U. JONATHAN TOPPO (Fight Director) Broadway -Studio 54. NYC -Sweat. The Public Theatre. NYC - Sweat

(Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Fight Choreography). The Guthrie Theatre. Minneapolis MN - West Side Story. Berkeley Repertory. Berkeley CA- Angels in America. Dallas Theatre Center Sweat. Portland Center Stage. Portland OR – Mojada. Portland Opera, Portland OR -Pirates of Penzance. Resident Fight Director Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2008-present). Instructor Dueling Arts International. www.ujonathantoppo.com PAUL JAMES PRENDERGAST (Composer/Sound Designer) TFANA Debut. Broadway: All The Way.

Regional (select): Oregon Shakespeare Festival (25 productions), Arena, La Jolla Playhouse, Guthrie, Taper, American Conservatory, American Repertory, Seattle Rep, Berkeley Rep, South Coast Rep, Long Wharf, Geffen, Hartford Stage, Alley. Extensive theme park, museum and dance credits. Awards: Grammy and Drama Desk nominations, Broadway World, Ovation, Gregory, Footlight, Gypsy. Paul’s work as a singer/songwriter has appeared in films, on recordings, and in music venues nationwide. ALISON BOMBER (Voice & Text Coach) spent seven years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, five of

those as Senior Text & Voice Coach. Productions included Michael Boyd’s award-winning Histories Cycle and many others. Now freelance, she continues to work with the RSC, and other work includes King Charles III for the Almeida, London and Broadway; Tamburlaine, Measure for Measure and The Winter's Tale for TFANA; and collaborations with Polish company, Pieśń Kozła (Song of the Goat). Alison is an RSC Associate Artist. www.alisonbomber.co.uk www.alisonbomber.blogspot.com Jordan Barbour (Mark Antony) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

T H E T R A G E DY O F J U L I U S C A E S A R 23

THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

JONATHAN KALB (Dramaturg) is Professor of Theater at

Hunter College and Resident Dramaturg at TFANA. A well-known theater critic and scholar, he is the creator and moderator of TheaterMatters: An Artists and Critics Review Panel, a free public-event series at The Invisible Dog Art Center (www.theatermatters.net). He writes frequently about theater on his TheaterMatters blog (www.jonathankalb.com). SETH McNEIL (Dramaturgy Assistant) is a theatre artist and

scholar who has developed work with Dixon Place, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Fresh Ground Pepper, The Barrow Group, and the American Shakespeare Center, where he was a semifinalist for the Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries Prize. Member, Dramatists Guild. Education: MA, Hunter College. ANDREW DIAZ (Props Supervisor) is a Brooklyn-based set and

props designer who has previously worked with Walt Disney Entertainment, Roundabout Theatre Company, MCC Theatre, Flea Theatre, Vineyard Theatre, Signature Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Carnegie Hall, Classic Stage Company, Primary Stages, The Public, Theater for a New Audience, Cherry Lane Theatre, and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, among others.

Merritt Janson (Portia) and Brandon J. Dirden (Marcus Brutus) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY OF JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

BLAKE ZIDELL & ASSOCIATES (Press Representative) is a Brooklyn-based public relations firm representing

artists, companies and institutions spanning a variety of disciplines. Clients include St. Ann’s Warehouse, Soho Rep, The Kitchen, Ars Nova, BRIC, P.S.122, Abrons Arts Center, Taylor Mac, LAByrinth Theater Company, StoryCorps, Irish Arts Center, Café Carlyle, Peak Performances, Batsheva Dance Company, The Playwrights Realm, Stephen Petronio Company, The Play Company, and FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival. MATTHEW AMENDT (Cassius) Broadway: Bernhardt/Hamlet. Off-Broadway: Coriolanus, 'Tis Pity She's

A Whore (Red Bull), Tamburlaine the Great, Much Ado About Nothing (TFANA) Henry V in the title role (The Acting Company); The Subject Was Roses, The Misanthrope (Pearl). Regional: Guthrie, La Jolla, Shakespeare Theatre Co., Seattle Rep., Pittsburgh Public, HVSF, Westport, and others. Awards: Presidential Scholar, Ivey Award, Emery Battis Award for Acting, Best Production—Leading Man 2018 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Hamlet. Upcoming: thecomedianstragedy.com JORDAN BARBOUR (Mark Antony) New York: Marry Me a Little (Drama League); Vertebrae (NYTW); Langston

in Harlem (Urban Stages); The Deepest Play Ever (CollaborationTown); Harmonious Pimps of Harmony (Ars Nova). Regional: The Wiz, Beauty and the Beast, Oklahoma!, Book of Will, Twelfth Night, Hamlet (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); All the Way, The 12 (Denver Center); Macbeth (Alabama Shakespeare Festival); Stormy Weather (Pasadena Playhouse). International: Peter Brooks’ The Suit, The Shipment. Training: Juilliard; BA, Columbia University. MARK BEDARD (Trebonius) Off-Broadway: Pride & Prejudice (Primary Stages); Midsummer Night’s Dream

(Pearl Theater); Fashions for Men (Mint Theater). Guthrie/OSF: The Cocoanuts (his own adaptation); Oregon Shakespeare: seven seasons. Hudson Valley Shakespeare: four seasons. Other regional: Roe (Arena Stage, Berkeley Rep); Forum (Geva Theatre); Cymbeline (Shakespeare Theatre Company); Boeing Boeing (Seattle Repertory); Waiting for Godot (Marin Theatre); Love’s Labour’s Lost (Shakespeare and Company). TV/Film: "The Good Fight"; "Instinct"; "The Knick." Education: UCIrvine. Website: www.markbedard.com 24

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THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

BENJAMIN BONENFANT (Octavius) is grateful to be revisiting

this production. NY credits: Heart of Robin Hood (Robin Hood) and Richard II (Aumerle), Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2 seasons): Mary Zimmerman’s The Odyssey (Telemachus), Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and Great Expectations (Pip). Regional: Denver Center, Colorado Shakespeare Festival (5 seasons), Arvada Center, Boulder Ensemble, Curious, Fine Arts Center, and TheatreWorks. TV: “Bull.” Training: University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. LIAM CRAIG (Caius Ligarius / Lepidus) was last seen at TFANA in

at the Feast of Lupercal in Theatre for a Servant of Two Masters. Broadway: Boeing Boeing (u/s, appeared). Off- Citizen New Audience's production of THE TRAGEDY Broadway: Later Life (Keen Company), The Internationalist (Vineyard OF JULIUS CAESAR, directed by Shana Cooper. Photo by Gerry Goodstein. Theatre), Aunt Dan and Lemon (New Group), Two Noble Kinsmen (Public Theater). Regional: Henry V, Seder (Hartford Stage), Book of Will (Denver Center), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Weston Playhouse), The Tempest; Accidental Death of an Anarchist. TV: “Mozart in the Jungle”, “Law & Order: SVU.” Film: The Royal Tenenbaums. MFA: NYU.

TED DEASY (Metellus Cimber) TFANA: Debut. National Tour of The 39 Steps, Days to Come (The Mint),

10 seasons as a company member with Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Regional: Dallas Summer Musicals, Cincinnati Playhouse, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Milwaukee Rep, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Repertory Theatre of St Louis, California Shakespeare, American Players Theatre, Syracuse Stage, Berkeley Rep, Yale Rep, Geva Theatre and Indiana Rep. Television and Film: “To the Flame” and “Prophet of Evil”. BRANDON J. DIRDEN (Brutus) TFANA debut. BROADWAY: Jitney, All The Way, Clybourne Park, Enron, Prelude

to a Kiss. OFF-BROADWAY: The Piano Lesson (AUDELCO, Obie, Theatre World Award), Detroit ‘67, Peter and the Starcatcher. TELEVISION: Agent Aderholt on “The Americans,” “The Get Down,” “The Good Wife,” “Public Morals,” “Manifest”. TRAINING: B.A.- Morehouse College, MFA-Univeristy of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. Core member of Fair Wage On Stage. Proud member of Actors Equity Association. For C&C.

(Cicero / Plebeian) Broadway: In the Next Room (Lincoln Center), A Man for All Seasons (Roundabout). Off-Broadway/National Tour: Love, Loss and What I Wore. Regional: Black Pearl Sings (Kitchen & Geva Theatres), In the Next Room (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis), Bossa Nova (Yale Rep), The Miracle Worker (Paper Mill Playhouse). TV: “Chicago PD”, “The Defenders”, “House of Cards”, “Boardwalk Empire”, “Law & Order: SVU.” Film: “The Humbling”. M.F.A.: Yale School of Drama. EMILY DORSCH

MICHELLE HURST (Soothsayer) THEATRE: Portland Stage, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Long Wharf Theatre,

NYSF/The Public Theater, Soho Rep, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 651 ARTS/Irondale Ensemble Project (Brooklyn, NY); The Kitchen Theatre (Ithaca, NY). FILM: “Jean of the Joneses,” “Airheads,” “Sherrybaby,” “Smoke,” “Baby, Won’t You Please Come Home.” TELEVISION: “BBC1's Last Tango in Halifax, Broad City,” “The Good Wife,” “Blue Bloods,” “Law & Order” (multiple episodes), “Sex and the City,” “Orange is the New Black.” MERRITT JANSON (Portia) TFANA: Tamburlaine (Michael Boyd, dir.), Notes From Underground (Robert

Woodruff, dir.), Measure for Measure (Simon Godwin, dir.). Other Off-Broadway includes A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Public), Coriolanus (Red Bull), premieres of House For Sale (Daniel Fish, dir.), The Last Will, and Robert O’Hara’s Built. Regional includes A.R.T., Yale Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Shakespeare Theater DC, Denver Center, Westport, Two River, Shakespeare & Company, The Wilma. Film/TV: “Otto+Anna, Mail Order Wife,” “Billions,” “Elementary,” “Madam Secretary,” “Quantico." T H E T R A G E DY O F J U L I U S C A E S A R 25

THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

ARMANDO MCCLAIN (Cinna) Regional: Sense & Sensibility, Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, The Odyssey,

The River Bride, Much Ado About Nothing, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Othello (Arabian Shakespeare Festival); The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth (Livermore Shakespeare Festival); You Know When the Men Are Gone (Word for Word); Richard the First Trilogy (Central Works), Good Goods (Crowded Fire), The Night is a Child (Pasadena Playhouse).

GALEN MOLK (Cinna, the Poet / Servant) Galen is thrilled to be part of this piece for his TFANA debut!

Regional: Julius Caesar, Mary Zimmerman's The Odyssey (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), An Act of God, Footlight Frenzy (Millbrook Playhouse). New York: meg jo beth amy & louisa (Tier 5/Dixon Place), King John (John Cullum Theatre), Every Seven Minutes (The Navigators), Against the Wall (Playwrights Downtown). TV pilots: “Eighty-12”, “American Vigilante”. www.galenmolk.com BARRET O’BRIEN (Decius Brutus) an actor and author from New Orleans. Past collaborations include

Playwright’s Realm, Clubbed Thumb, HERE, Yale Rep, Long Wharf, Southern Rep, Montana Rep, OSF, Man in the Moon (London), Broffabrik (Bonn), Theatre du Marais (Paris), Contemporary Theatre (Budapest). He’s the founder of Finding our Tails, education workshops that embolden youth to discover their story through theater. His books The Full Bent and Greater Wilder are available at www.barretorien.com. JULIAN REMULLA (Lucius) Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet; Jonathan Handle in The Way the Mountain Moved;

Lucius, Plebeian in Julius Caesar; Baker, Chorus in Disney's Beauty and the Beast; Nol, Proteus in Shakespeare in Love; Francisco, Player in Hamlet; Dion, Ensemble in The Winter’s Tale; Ventidius’ Messenger, Caphis, Musician in Timon of Athens (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Vivaldi in Appoggiatura (Denver Center Theatre Company); Rama in Prince Rama and the Monkey King (Boxtales Theatre Company). JULIANA SASS (Artemidorous) is delighted to be making her TFANA debut! Theater: Little Murders, The

Man Who. Film/TV: “Liberté: A Call to Spy” (upcoming), “Radium Girls”, “The Sisterhood of Night”, “Alan Alda & The Actor Within You” (HBO), “Ivy” (webseries). Training: BADA, Atlantic Acting School, BA in Comparative Literature from Harvard. www.julianasass.com ROCCO SISTO (Julius Caesar) TFANA: Measure For Measure, Souls Of Naples. BROADWAY: Amadeus, The

King And I, Comedy Of Errors, To Be Or Not To Be, Seminar—standby for Alan Rickman. OFF-BROADWAY: Enrico IV, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Light Years among many others. TELEVISION: “The Blacklist”, “Madame Secretary”, “Bluebloods”, “Law & Order(s)”, “The Sopranos”, “Star Trek T.N.G.”, “CSI”, etc. FILM: “Donnie Brasco, Frequency”, “Eraser, Lorenzo’s Oil”, “Possession”, “The American Astronaut”. 3 OBIE awards for Quills, The Winter’s Tale and sustained excellence. Founding member of Shakespeare & Co. STEPHEN MICHAEL SPENCER (Caska) Regional: Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Sweat (Arena Stage); The

Winter’s Tale, Hamlet, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Off The Rails, Love's Labour's Lost, Othello (the A.R.T); Cleveland Play House: Yentl, Carol for Cleveland, In Arabia We'd All Be Kings, The Misanthrope, Twelfth Night; Triad Stage: Tartuffe; Chautauqua Theatre Company: As You Like It, Clybourne Park, Comedy of Errors. International: The Heart of Robin Hood (Mirvish Productions). Training: B.F.A. UNC at Greensboro, M.F.A. Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland PlayHouse. www.stephenmichaelspencer.com TIFFANY RACHELLE STEWART (Calphurnia) Broadway: Curious Incident. Off-Broadway: Sugar In Our Wounds

(Manhattan Theatre Club), Pericles (Public), Vagina Monologues (Cherry Lane). Regional: Animal Farm (Baltimore Center Stage/Milwaukee Rep), House That Will Not Stand (Berkeley Rep/Yale Rep), Vera Stark (The Alliance), Love's Labour's Lost, The African Co. Presents Richard III (Oregon Shakes), Conference of the Birds (Folger Shakespeare Theatre). TV/Film: "Black Rose," "All My Children," “Royal Pains," Hotel Pennsylvania. MFA, Yale School of Drama. 26

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THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

LEADERSHIP

JEFFREY HOROWITZ (Founding Artistic Director) began his career in theatre as an actor and appeared

on Broadway, Off Broadway, and in regional theatre. In 1979, he founded Theatre for a New Audience. Horowitz has served on the Panel of the New York State Council on the Arts, on the Board of Directors of Theatre Communications Group, the Advisory Board of the Shakespeare Society, and the Artistic Directorate of London’s Globe Theatre. He received the John Houseman Award in 2003 and The Breukelein Institute’s 2004 Gaudium Award. (Managing Director) joined Theatre for a New Audience in 2003. She spent the previous ten years devoted to fundraising for the 92nd Street Y and the Brooklyn Museum. Ryan began her career in classical music artist management and has also served as company manager for Chautauqua Opera, managing director for the Opera Ensemble of New York, and general manager of Eugene Opera. She is a 2014 Brooklyn Women of Distinction honoree from Community Newspaper Group. DOROTHY RYAN

MICHAEL PAGE (General Manager) joined TFANA in 2013, where he has managed over 20 productions

at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Prior to TFANA Michael was the general manager of the Tony Award-winning Vineyard Theatre and the managing director of Off-Broadway’s Barrow Street Theatre where he managed the U.S. premiere of Nina Raine’s Tribes and David Cromer’s landmark production of Our Town, among many others. Michael sits on the Board of Directors for the League of Resident Theatres (LORT), is active with the Off-Broadway League, and is on the adjunct faculty at CUNY/ Brooklyn College’s Department of Theater.

Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage. Photo by Francis Dzikowski/OTTO.

T H E T R A G E DY O F J U L I U S C A E S A R 27

ABOUT THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE About Theatre for a New Audience Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, the mission of Theatre for a New Audience is to develop and vitalize the performance and study of Shakespeare and classic drama. Theatre for a New Audience produces for audiences Off-Broadway and has also toured nationally, internationally and to Broadway. We are guided in our work by five core values: a reverence for language, a spirit of adventure, a commitment to diversity, a dedication to learning, and a spirit of service. These values inform what we do with artists, how we interact with audiences, and how we manage our organization. Theatre for a New Audience Education Programs

S TA F F

Founding Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz Managing Director Dorothy Ryan General Manager Michael Page Director of Institutional Advancement James J. Lynes Finance Director Mary Sormeley Education Director Kathleen Dorman Director of Marketing & Communications Jennifer Lam Associate Producer / Director of the Studio Nidia Medina Associate Director of Develeopment Barbara Toy Associate General Manager Kiana Carrington Theatre Manager Steven Gaultney Production Manager Zach Longstreet Box Office & Subscriptions Manager Allison Byrum Facilities Manager Jordan Asinofsky Institutional Support Manager Sara Billeaux Marketing Manager Torrence Browne Literary & Humanities Manager / Assistant to the Artistic Director Soriya Chum Development Associate Richard Brighi Finance Associate Michelle Esposito Education Associate Philip Calabro Facilities Associate Rashawn Caldwell House Manager Coral Cohen Press Representative Blake Zidell & Associates Resident Literary Advisor Jonathan Kalb Resident Casting Director Jack Doulin

Theatre for a New Audience is an award-winning company recognized for artistic excellence. Our education programs introduce students to Shakespeare and other classics with the same artistic integrity that we apply to our productions. Through our unique and exciting methodology, students engage in hands-on learning that involves all aspects of literacy set in the context of theatre education. Our residencies are structured to address City and State Learning Standards both in English language Arts and the Arts, the New York City DOE’s Curriculum Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Theater, and the Common Core Learning Standards for English Language Arts. Begun in 1984, our programs have served more than 130,000 students, ages 9 through 18, in New York City Public Schools city-wide. A Home in Brooklyn: Polonsky Shakespeare Center Theatre for a New Audience’s home, Polonsky Shakespeare Center, is a centerpiece of the Brooklyn Cultural District. Designed by celebrated architect Hugh Hardy, Polonsky Shakespeare Center is the first theatre in New York designed and built expressly for classic drama since Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont in the 1960s. The 27,500 square-foot facility is a unique performance space in New York. The 299-seat Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage, inspired by the Cottesloe at London’s National Theatre, combines an Elizabethan courtyard theatre with modern theatre technology that allows the stage and seating to be arranged in seven configurations. The new facility also includes the Theodore C. Rogers Studio (a 50-seat rehearsal/ performance studio), and theatrical support spaces. The City of New York-developed Arts Plaza, designed by landscape architect Ken Smith, creates a natural gathering place around the building. In Addition, Polonsky Shakespeare Center is also one of the few sustainable (green) theatre in the country, with LEED-NC Silver rating from the United States Green Building Council. Now with a home of its own, Theatre for a New Audience is contributing to the continued renaissance of Downtown Brooklyn. In addition to its season of plays, the Theatre has expanded its Humanities offerings to include lectures, seminars, workshops, and other activities for artists, scholars, and the general public. When not in use by the Theatre, its new facility is available for rental, bringing much needed affordable performing and rehearsal space to the community.

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W AU D I E N C E 36 0 ° S E R I E S

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Chairman: Robert E. Buckholz Vice Chairman Kathleen C. Walsh President Jeffrey Horowitz Founding Artistic Director Vice President and Secretary Dorothy Ryan Managing Director Executive Committee Robert E. Buckholz Jeffrey Horowitz John J. Kerr, Jr. Seymour H. Lesser Larry M. Loeb Audrey Heffernan Meyer Kathleen C. Walsh Monica Gerard-Sharp Wambold Members John Berendt* Sally Brody William H. Burgess, III Zoë Caldwell* Ben Campbell Robert Caro* Connie Christensen Dr. Sharon Dunn* Dana Ivey* Catherine Maciariello* Caroline Niemczyk Rachel Polonsky Theodore C. Rogers Philip R. Rotner Mark Rylance* Daryl D. Smith Susan Stockel Michael Stranahan John Douglas Thompson* John Turturro* Josh Weisberg Frederick Wiseman* *Artistic Council

Emeritus Francine Ballan Dr. Charlotte K. Frank Jane Wells

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

MA JOR SUPPORTERS

Even with capacity audiences, ticket sales account for a small portion of our operating costs. The Theatre expresses its deepest thanks to the following Foundations, Corporations, Government Agencies and Individuals for their generous support of the Theatre’s Humanities, Education, and Outreach programs.

The 360° Series: Viewfinders has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Viewfinder do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. A Challenge Grant from the NEH established a Humanities endowment fund at Theatre for a New Audience to support these programs in perpetuity. Leading matching gifts to the NEH grant were provided by Joan and Robert Arnow, Norman and Elaine Brodsky, The Durst Organization, Perry and Marty Granoff, Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, John J. Kerr & Nora Wren Kerr, Litowitz Foundation, Inc., Robert and Wendy MacDonald, Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder, The Prospect Hill Foundation, Inc., Theodore C. Rogers, and from purchasers in the Theatre’s Seat for Shakespeare Campaign, 2013 – 2015. Theatre for a New Audience’s Humanities, Education, and Outreach programs are supported, in part, by The Elayne P. Bernstein Education Fund. For more information on naming a seat or making a gift to the Humanities endowments, please contact James Lynes, Director of Institutional Advancement, at 212-229-2819 x29, or by email at jlynes@tfana.org. Theatre for a New Audience’s productions and education programs receive support from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Additional funding is provided by the generosity of the following Foundations and Corporations through either general operating support or direct support of the Theatre’s arts in education programs: PRINCIPAL BENEFACTORS

($100,000 and up) Jerome L. Green Arts Access Fund of the New York Community Trust National Endowment for the Humanities New York City Department of Cultural Affairs The SHS Foundation The Shubert Foundation, Inc. The Thompson Family Foundation The Winston Foundation LEADING BENEFACTORS

($50,000 and up) Bloomberg LP Deloitte & Touche LLP MAJOR BENEFACTORS

($20,000 and up) The Achelis and Bodman Foundation Sidney E. Frank Foundation Hearst Rita & Alex Hillman Foundation Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP Latham & Watkins LLP National Endowment for the Arts New York State Council on the Arts May and Samuel Rudin Foundation Inc. The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation Troy Chemical Corporation The Margaret Whitton Charitable Remainder Trust SUSTAINING BENEFACTORS

($10,000 and up) A'lani Kailani Blue Lotus White Star Foundation

The Howard Bayne Fund Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. Coydog Foundation Debevoise & Plimpton LLP The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Jean and Louis Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. Geen Family Foundation Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP Joseph and Sally Handleman Foundation Trust A Irving Harris Foundation The DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund The J.M. Kaplan Fund King & Spalding LLP Kirkland & Ellis LLP Loeb & Loeb LLP Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison The Round Table of Cultural Seminars, Ltd. Select Equity Group, Inc. Sidley Austin LLP Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

Macy’s Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP Richenthal Foundation The Starry Night Fund The Dorothy Steslin Foundation Michael Tuch Foundation, Inc. Wells Fargo Bank The White Cedar Fund Whiting Foundation

PRODUCERS CIRCLE— THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S SOCIETY

($1,000 and up) Bloomberg Philanthropies Bressler, Amery & Ross BRIC Arts Media EMM Wealth Management Kinder Morgan Foundation Mannheim LLC The Grace R. and Alan D. Marcus Foundation The Randolph Foundation Richmond County Savings Foundation The Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust

($5,000 and up) Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP Axe-Houghton Foundation Council Member Laurie A. Cumbo, NY City Council Discretionary Funding The Ettinger Foundation Forest City Ratner Companies The Claire Friedlander Family Foundation Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP Ingram Yuzek Gainen Carroll & Bertolotti, LLP Litowitz Foundation, Inc.

PRODUCERS CIRCLE—EXECUTIVE

($2,500 and up) Actors’ Equity Association The Norman D. and Judith H. Cohen Foundation The Barbara Bell Cumming Charitable Trust DeWitt Stern Group, Inc. Marta Heflin Foundation Lucille Lortel Foundation PRODUCERS CIRCLE—ASSOCIATE

T H E T R A G E DY O F J U L I U S C A E S A R 29

W W W . T FA N A . O R G