360° Viewfinder: RICHARD II & HENRY IV WORKSHOPS

360 ° SERIES

VIEWFINDER: FACTS AND PERSPECTIVES ON THE PLAY, PLAYWRIGHT, AND PRODUCTION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

3 Dialogues: Looking for Legitimacy in Richard II and Henry IV by Tanya

Pollard

6 Interview: Discovery in Shakespeare's Histories moderated by Ayanna Thompson featuring Christian Camargo, Jay O. Sanders, Susannah Perkins, and Eric Tucker

18 The Production: Cast and Creative Team

About Theatre For a New Audience

23 Leadership

24 Mission and Programs

25 Major Supporters

Our 2022-23 Season is dedicated to Celebrating the Memory of Peter Brook.

From 2008-2019, TFANA was honored to present seven New York Premieres of works by Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Beckett and new plays by Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne directed by Peter or co-directed by Peter and Marie-Hélène.

The presentations of Richard II and Henry IV are made possible through the Theatre’s Merle Debuskey Studio Fund.

Additional support for Henry IV is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.

DIALOGUES LOOKING FOR LEGITIMACY IN RICHARD II AND HENRY IV

BY TANYA POLLARD

Who do we trust, and why? And how should we respond when those in power break the rules? These questions are at the heart of Richard II and Henry IV, which examine the fallout of flawed rulers and parents. Written in the 1590s as the death of a childless monarch drew near, and set across two regime changes from the 1390s to the 1410s, the plays speak just as urgently to our own moment. Shakespeare offers no solutions to ruptures in the social contract, but the unpredictable and improvised experiments that the plays set in motion suggest possible directions for new paths.

Early in Richard II, the king shatters the source of his own legitimacy. When he instructs his courtiers to seize the goods and lands of his uncle John of Gaunt after Gaunt’s death, the shock waves are immediate, and profound. As others quickly point out, Gaunt’s property belongs to his son Henry Bolingbroke, the Duke of Hereford, whom Richard has just exiled in a transparent ploy to cover up his own misdeeds. “Seek you to seize and gripe into your hands / The royalties and rights of banished Hereford?,” another uncle, the Duke of York, queries in disbelief. As he goes on to point out, breaking the law of inheritance invalidates Richard’s own power:

Take Hereford’s rights away, and take from Time His charters and his customary rights; Let not tomorrow then ensue today; Be not thyself; for how art thou a king But by fair sequence and succession?

In challenging the “customary rights” of heredity, Richard isn’t just acting maliciously; he’s rewriting the natural order, undoing the understood rights of sons to replace their fathers. He’s also unwittingly undermining his own authority. As York emphasizes, the rules of sequence and succession are the only reason that Richard himself is king. Without them, he loses his quasi-magical status, like the Wizard of Oz after a pulled-back curtain reveals him to be an ordinary man. York’s haunting question implicitly predicts what follows: Richard is soon ousted as king, a previously unthinkable act. If status doesn’t flow automatically from fathers to sons, the throne must be earned rather than assumed, and Richard is unprepared to win the role on merit.

As anyone who has ever had children (or parents) knows, the fantasy of identity transferring smoothly across generations rarely bears up in practice. Like

Notes Front Cover: Art by Paul Davis.

This Viewfinder will be periodically updated with additional information. Last updated January 30, 2023.

Credits

Richard II and Henry IV Workshops 360° | Edited by Nadiya L. Atkinson

Resident Dramaturg: Jonathan Kalb Council of Scholars Chair: Tanya Pollard Designed by: Milton Glaser, Inc.

Publisher: Theatre for a New Audience, Jeffrey Horowitz, Founder and Artistic Director

Richaard II and Henry IV Workshops 360° Copyright 2023 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.

Henry IV Pt. 2, V.V, "Denouncement of Falstaff by the King." Folger Shakespeare Library.

LOOKING FOR LEGITIMACY IN RICHARD II AND HENRY IV TANYA POLLARD

won the kingship through savvy campaigning and sympathetic indignation; Mortimer, who had been previously selected by Richard as his successor; and, in a parody of the play’s proliferation of possible kings, an army of royal impersonators fighting on the Shrewsbury battlefield. After the Earl of Douglas, fighting for the rebels, triumphantly kills a soldier disguised as the king, his fellow rebel Hotspur (Harry Percy) corrects him, observing that “The king hath many marching in his coats.” By the time Douglas encounters the actual Henry on the field, his experience of false kings spurs skepticism. “Another king!,” he scoffs; “they grow like Hydra’s heads. . . what art thou, / That counterfeit’st the person of a king?” When Henry responds that he is “The king himself,” Douglas’s reply captures one of the play’s primary themes: “I fear thou art another counterfeit.”

LOOKING FOR LEGITIMACY IN RICHARD II AND HENRY IV TANYA POLLARD

respond to the broken succession that is his birthright, by forging a new kind of kin. In the tavern world he absorbs the irrepressible verve that endears Falstaff not only to him, but to audiences. Born to one father, Hal is remade with another’s spirits, both figuratively and literally. Crediting the power of “excellent sherry” for “the warming of the blood,” Falstaff explains that “the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father he hath... husbanded and tilled with excellent endeavour of drinking... [till] he is become very hot and valiant.”

where both real and mock deaths are always counterfeit, Hal and his two fathers are always still alive, still negotiating the transfer of power between generations, and still challenging audiences to identify the real thing.

many families, Richard’s contains rifts, fractures, secrets, and suspicions. Unlike most families, though, his is both microcosm and symbol of the nation it rules. Its infighting plays out on a public stage, with combatants wielding outsized power; the stakes are impossibly high. According to the medieval theory of the divine right of kings, a monarch was, as Gaunt pronounced, “God’s substitute, / His deputy.” James I went even further, proclaiming in 1610, “Kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself they are called gods.” Kings were born, not chosen; their quasi-divine status was inherited from fathers and transmitted to oldest sons. The play confronts a terrifying dilemma: who is in the right when a king usurps his cousin’s God-given inheritance, and when that cousin usurps a God-given kingship? The crisis at the heart of Richard II is both domestic and cosmic.

Parts 1 and 2 of Henry IV unfold in the uneasy aftermath of this crisis. Bolingbroke–now Henry IV–has taken the throne, but the legitimacy of his rule is uncertain. If God’s support has gone, who is the real king? Shakespeare offers several possible candidates: Henry himself, who

While Douglas questions whether he’s found the real king, both Henry and his son Hal wonder if their family line has been cursed. Along with chiding Hal, “thou has lost thy princely privilege,” Henry wishes he could trade his son for Hotspur, his enemy’s son. “O that it could be proved / That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged / In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,” he muses, “And called mine Percy, his Plantagenet! / Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.” Hal, similarly disaffected with his father, seeks a new parental figure in Falstaff, who plays Hal’s father in the theater of the Eastcheap tavern. Just as Henry claims to be “the king himself,” Falstaff insists on his own genuineness. When Hal, play-acting his father, banishes Falstaff, Falstaff insists “never call a true piece of gold a counterfeit.” Later, after playing dead on the battlefield to avoid being killed, Falstaff rises and scoffs, “’Sblood, ’twas time to counterfeit.” Yet he goes on to correct himself. “I am no counterfeit,” he explains; “to die is to be a counterfeit; for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man: but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed.”

Acc ording to Falstaff, distinguishing the real from the counterfeit–deciding whom to trust–means looking for life, animation, breath, soul. If the king’s court loses its legitimacy, Hal’s mock-court at Eastcheap offers an alternative family. As Hal learns to “drink with any tinker in his own language,” he similarly finds a way to

If Henry is Hal’s father by blood, Falstaff is his father by spirit. Hal learns how to be king from both fathers, but in this new world of broken “sequence and succession,” he can’t simply recreate either man’s legacy. To rule the country he must, in Coriolanus’s words, “stand, / As if a man were author of himself / And knew no other kin.” Ultimately, he must lose both fathers: one to death, and one to the banishment that he had already cannily rehearsed in the tavern. But in the world of the theater,

TANYA POLLARD (Chair, Council of Scholars) 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), Shakespeare’s Theater: A Sourcebook (2003), and four co-edited collections of essays on early modern drama, emotions, bodies, and responses to Greek plays. She appeared in Shakespeare Uncovered: Macbeth (PBS, 2013) with Ethan Hawke and in Shakespeare Uncovered: King Lear (PBS, 2015) with Christopher Plummer. Beyond her involvement with TFANA, she has worked with artists and audiences at theaters including the Red Bull, the Public, the Classic Stage Company, and the Roundabout. A former Rhodes Scholar, she has received fellowships from the NEH, Whiting, and Mellon foundations.

William Nelson Gardiner. Richard II. Engraving, ca. 1790. Folger Shakespeare Library.

Henry IV Pt. 2, IV.V "The prince is about to take the crown from the king" / Bida. Folger Shakespeare Library.

INTERVIEW EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

power until post-January 6th. Experiencing that in our country on that level has made these relevant in a new way for me personally. I think we all talked about that in the room, and how, unfortunately, we are all really versed in this now. We saw it on television, and the whole thing that’s been going on, now hanging over us this next election.

But then there’s so many other things: what it means to be a tyrant, what it means to be a good leader or a bad leader. There’s so much about fathers and sons that’s relevant to anybody’s lives. What I love is there’s so much in these plays that anybody would take away from. Depending on who you are in the audience and where your life is, there’s something you can take. Even the idea of what veterans go through: there’s so much with soldiers on the field and Falstaff’s honor speech. It’s all really, really relevant to our American political system, especially when you look at how the last several years have felt like we’re on the brink of some kind

of civil war in this country. Lines are so divided, and I think these plays can resonate with an American audience in scary ways now.

AYANNA THOMPSON I think you’re right. I think they’ve become relevant in ways that we don’t want them to be relevant right now, which is about dynasties and family power: who keeps it, who gives it up, and what does it mean to give it up peacefully. So, Christian, can you talk about your Richard II, and what attracted you to this role, and what’s keeping you attracted to it? Because I think it’s a really, really hard part.

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO Yeah. We just spent a whole day on it today, so it’s a brain fry right now, but I think that it’s extraordinarily beautiful language, right? And I really have been enjoying sitting through both Henry IV and Richard because it’s literally opposite narrative styles. Henry IV has such a freedom and looseness to it. Richard’s such a contained, tight structure, a beautiful piece of

Ayanna Thompson sat down with actors Christian Camargo, Susannah Perkins, and Jay O. Sanders and director Eric Tucker to chat about workshoping three Shakespeare plays in three weeks, their reflection on American democracy, and , the rehearsal process.

AYANNA THOMPSON Why Richard II and Henry IV?

ERIC TUCKER Well, it started out with Jeffrey, who had this idea about figuring out a way to do all eight of the major history plays in one season. We started talking about this pre-pandemic, and through the pandemic trying to have conversations about how many months would that take, how many actors, how do you fund it, what’s the format, and what does that group of actors look like.

Then Jeffrey thought, “Well, why don’t we first produce one of those plays, and what would you want it to be?”

And I said, “Why don’t we do the two Henry IVs as a way to dip into the world, and also because TFANA has never done Henry IV Parts 1 and 2.” They’re such brilliant plays and crowd-pleasers in so many ways.

The idea was to do a workshop at first, and then possibly put the plays in this season, but we didn’t get to workshop this year. So the workshop is happening now, with the intent of trying to do them–the Henry IVs–maybe next year or the year after. But then, he also thought, “Well, I think maybe Christian’s free.” Christian had done a reading of Richard II, so Jeffrey said, “Should we throw in Richard II? Because we’ve got three weeks, why not do three plays instead of two?” [Laughter] I’m glad you’re laughing at that.

And I said, “Yeah, let’s do it.” Christian was free, so we just jumped in to try to start sorting out the relevance of the plays, just to dip our toes in and see what that would be like.

AYANNA THOMPSON Obviously, to me, I love these plays, I love teaching these plays, I love seeing them. Whenever I see Richard II, I want Henry IV, so I’m wondering what attracted you to why these plays would be relevant in this moment.

ERIC TUCKER No, I agree. I love the Henriad. I never thought about the peaceful (or not peaceful) transfer of

Left to Right: Eric Tucker, Heidi Armbruster, Tom Pecinka, Brenda Meaney. Photo by Hollis King.

AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTIAN CAMARGO, SUSANNAH PERKINS, JAY O. SANDERS, AND ERIC TUCKER. MODERATED BY AYANNA THOMPSON.

Christian Camargo and Byron Jennings. Photo by Hollis King.

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

of why they hate him, and without fail, by the end of the play, they’re weeping. And so, that perfect chiasmic structure of Richard II, where you’re allowed to think that he’s failed in so many ways, and then, he's so ascendant in our emotional hearts by the end, it just seems like a great part to play.

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO The fallibility of the human…

AYANNA THOMPSON Jay, can you talk about your Falstaff?

JAY O. SANDERS Falstaff is a great. I get to blow everything up and question everything. I’ve always wanted to play him. I’ve played Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor in a musical version, which was fun, but it’s just a totally different thing. Whereas Falstaff is one of the great characters of the entire canon, put up there with Lear and Hamlet even.

I’m blowing up all the assumptions of the world that Hal was raised in. So, Hal’s going, “What does it mean to be king?”, which is obviously Henry V.

The entirety of Henry V is really like a rulebook, almost, a user’s manual for how to be king, and every scene is running into the problems: well, now you have to decide this, now you have to lead that, now people’s lives are in danger if you do this, but you need to do that for the country. I’m the preparation to say, “Nothing is a given, nothing is a given,” and the freedom of that is eternal. It’s something that we live with now. Every time we’re pushed into corners of “You have to believe this, you have to go that way,” the only real freedom is to say, “No, I don’t have to believe anything. Republicans and Democrats can all go to hell. We should all be independents and think for ourselves."

poetry, but it’s almost like this doll has been threaded very tight that has to burst at the seams. What it bursts into is Henry IV. It's this rich, loose, fun world, whereas Richard’s just been trying to keep it together. I’m borrowing some of that looseness and that wildness of Henry IV and putting some of that into Richard II.

I’m also very interested in what’s going on nowadays as far as mental health is concerned regarding COVID, and gosh, the whole universe. The whole world has changed–is changing–and I think there’s a lot of adverse effects that are coming from that. I think to see it play out with Richard is adapting a lot of that mental instability that’s coming to our age to him. The sense of “Oh, I thought I know what the world was, and now it’s something completely different, and how do I respond to that?” That expression "the rug is taken right under him”: it completely has. And he’s allowed it. There’s a whole other argument of the responsibility of leadership and what that means, but I’m taking a more personal level of the unwinding and the unraveling of human consciousness and the effects of the world being upturned. Being able to do that with such beautiful [language]… There’s rhyming couplets in this, whereas Henry doesn’t have any of that, really.

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO Oh, right, that’s true. Which is also interesting–the vestiges of both in the other.

ERIC TUCKER But the fact that all Richard is verse, all verse…

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO And also, to be honest, it’s terrifying in a safe way to be able to do this process, which has given us no time. We wouldn’t be up on our feet by now at all. And then, with Richard, we’ve been removing furniture so that it’s actually even more scary–less props, less things to hold onto–because we wanted to center it around the text more. Then Henry IV becomes more of a world. So, it’s sort of terrifying, but in a kind of free way.

AYANNA THOMPSON It’s interesting, the way you described the tightness of Richard II as a play and the liberation you feel in Henry IV as a world. It does feel almost like you’re moving from medieval England into something that is looking towards a modern political state. My students always start Richard II hating him: they’re the least sympathetic to him. They have all their readings

Where Richard is very complex in what he’s going through, he’s very much in a line in conventionality, and Falstaff is all about breaking that convention. The honor speech is a perfect example of that, [Richard] saying he assumes that he is appointed by God, and that the king should be sacrosanct. I assume nothing is sacrosanct, and it’s my job to blow it up. And while I’m doing it, I’m giving an education to my Hal if only in the idea that

AYANNA THOMPSON So you don’t think Falstaff was actually at the Capitol on January 6th with his expendables with him?

JAY O. SANDERS He was drunk on his ass. Somebody tried to bring him, and he maybe kicked them because they got near his stool. The other thing is I think Falstaff loves. I think there is great love. There’s also self-love and self-preservation to make it hysterical throughout. Just

Christian Camargo. Photo by Hollis King.

JAY O. SANDERS Falstaff’s speeches.

Jay O. Sanders. Photo by Hollis King.

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

when you think he's gonna do the right thing, he goes, “Eh, well, what do I get out of this?” But he’s so human, everybody recognizes themselves in that character for those reasons. So, we’re taking a run at it. It’s just three weeks of searching and searching and searching –

ERIC TUCKER A week and a half, really.

JAY O. SANDERS That’s right, a week and a half. And we’re bouncing off each other, and we’re searching through the text. I spend a lot of time just looking through and looking through and looking through the language of it when I’m not in the midst of doing something. And so does Christian. But then, we all have things that we do in the other shows. So, it’s a big, hot mess, but it’s a big, hot mess in the best way because I think –

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO So is Falstaff.

JAY O. SANDERS Exactly. Shakespeare is ultimately at his best because he is a big, hot mess of humanity. Nothing goes through that better than these history plays, all different levels of society and all different levels of power (or total lack of power). It’s humanity.

AYANNA THOMPSON I think that’s right. I think the next collected works of Shakespeare should be called The Big, Hot Mess of Humanity because I think that does capture what he captures so well, and also some of the crazy structural elements of the plays where you get these tiny scenes and little characters. You get the sense that Shakespeare’s writing quickly, and people were performing them very quickly, much in the style that you all are, so you must feel close to that.

JAY O. SANDERS It’s also Eric’s job in this, which is a very different position because he knows he doesn’t have enough time to do a production by any means, saying how do we make our own hot mess situation that allows all of this to live for an audience?

So, all of us are throwing in something, a lot of it instinct, coming from the experiences that we’ve had in the past plus our curiosities into the future to try to find something more. But as you know, with Shakespeare, there’s no bottom to it. You can look at it forever. We can run these roles in rep all year, and we’d still be finding new stuff. So, that’s why I do it, that’s why I’m here. I’m here

floundering in the best way, and laughing, and searching through the hot mess of this situation.

AYANNA THOMPSON And isn’t that Hal’s role? So, Susannah, tell me about your Hal, and how you’re approaching it?

SUSANNAH PERKINS I have always really enjoyed the history plays as a performer who is not a guy because gender is not necessarily in the foreground. Gender has always been really fun and exciting for me. I’ve gotten to see lots of all-female history plays, and they feel really ripe for that in an exciting way. Hal particularly is a person who’s figuring out what it means to be a person, which, to me, isn’t about being a man or a woman necessarily. It’s about trying on different identities and figuring out the best way to rule, which, to me, is not an inherently gendered journey.

But furthermore, there’s something really exciting about playing Hal as not a man that is about the newness and the future of England. There’s something in Hal that frightens his father, and I think that there’s an interesting queer or female reading of that, though I wouldn’t say that we were necessarily super interested in being like, “What if Hal was a girl?” We haven’t changed any of the pronouns in the script.

JAY O. SANDERS None of it’s being nailed down. That’s the big thing. It is all exploration. We are sharing exploration with an audience, which is a rare thing. It can make people a little tenuous as performers because we go in and there are audiences who are used to seeing full productions. But we’re hoping that they will come on board with the idea that we’re all throwing in and exploring these big, beautiful shows, and you’re welcome to sit in with us.

AYANNA THOMPSON I think that’s exactly right, and to circle back to something Susannah said, that fluidity is clearly something that Shakespeare was interested in in the way that he wrote and the style of performance at the time. But in particular, for these three shows, the two Henry IV s and Richard II , there is the sense that the world is changing, that the axis is turning, and that there’s a fluidity of experience for the people living in that moment. I think Hal is at the center of this fluidity, so I love the way that you’re saying that Hal’s character

could be frightening both to Richard II and to their father figures–to Falstaff too. Hal is quite threatening at times. There’s a love and unease, I think.

SUSANNAH PERKINS I completely agree with what you just said and how exciting for the prince to potentially be a nonbinary person. And also, I think, something that Hal does get from Falstaff, as you said, Jay, is a questioning of givens. The way that he [Falstaff] takes apart honor as a concept in that honor speech, that sort of irreverence for systems could possibly extend to gender and heterosexuality in a way that is really exciting. I think part of what’s so exciting to Hal about the world of the tavern is the breaking down of roles and the chaos that lives at the corners of a more structured, more socially acceptable society.

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO As a voyeur on the outside, there’s also an added element of watching a “youth,” whatever that means, stepping up and actually doing something about the hot mess. I think that in our time and day and age it’s super important to get the message across, because there’s a complacency and a kind of “What’s the use? Because we’re all screwed anyway.” And here’s someone who’s actually going to step up, and take that role, and do something about it.

JAY O. SANDERS Young people–because of media and social media, there is a… I would say there’s an invitation to watch what’s going on around us instead of to participate.

AYANNA THOMPSON I agree, but I do think that–since I work with Gen Z, they’re in college now–I think they would relate to Hal and the “All right, maybe I’m playing it being laid back, and hanging out, and chilling, but I also have this plan. Greta Thunberg’s in my head. I’m gonna save the planet.” I just think that this could be a production that speaks very clearly to a Gen Z audience.

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO Yeah, I think it’s time for not just Gen Z, though. It’s an example for everyone. Here is someone who was hanging out in pubs, who was really not taking on the role, and then actually getting f-ed up, getting bloodied, and just diving into the fray. I don’t think we as an American civilization are quite there yet. We’re still too comfortable.

I think this is a really great story for the world, for Americans and youth particularly, to say, “Hey, you’ve gotta go for it. You’ve gotta get in there.” You see the pictures of France: they just raised the retirement age, and it’s huge protests in the street, not of old people,

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

but everyone, going, “No, we’re gonna change this, we’re gonna do this.”

JAY O. SANDERS Or the Ukraine.

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO Or Ukraine.

AYANNA THOMPSON So, Eric, can you tell us about the process? Because it sounds unlike any other process that most of you have been in.

JAY O. SANDERS We’re hoping we never do this again. ERIC TUCKER Yeah… No, we’re not joking. It’s unnatural, obviously. Christian was saying two days ago that right now in the process is when they, as actors, would start memorizing. We’d start really expanding, deepening, and fleshing out the roles after this table work, but there’s a ceiling there. We’re not doing that because it’s just a reading, and so, we can really only go so far. I think a big part of the process I wasn’t counting on, and probably none of us did necessarily, was that we’re tasked with putting up a thing in front of an audience, so our brains are trained to get ready for that audience, to make it slick and without mistakes. And yet, they’re gonna read the play in front of an audience. But, we didn’t want it to be a bunch of people sitting around with music stands and a script for three or four hours or whatever it’s gonna be. Plus it’s in the round, so you can’t really do that anyway. We would need a proscenium to just set up and read the play. So, we’re doing something that’s sort of between a reading and not a full production. So, we’ve been struggling with making this its own thing, its own event, which naturally derails us from the table work and figuring out what we’re actually saying and what these relationships are. What’s the event of any moment or any scene? We are often just trying to figure out, “is this too much movement, not enough movement, should everybody enter here, should we just stand in the chairs.” We’re still designing a thing.

JAY O. SANDERS Eric’s being Falstaff, too, in that. It’s his job to remind us, “No, rough that up, f– that up. If you make it look too clean, the expectation is it’s a performance.” So, we’ve been having great conversations about this, about how do we signal to the audience. It’s almost like you walk in, you fall down, you spill your

coffee on your script, you go, “Oh, sh-t!” Everybody laughs, you start up, and then you realize, “Oh yeah, we’re in a rehearsal.” Somehow, the audience has to realize we’re not performing for you, we’re playing with you.

ERIC TUCKER Someone said that–maybe it was you, Christian–someone said in rehearsal there’s a difference when actors are trying to figure out what the play is for us doing the production and when you get to a point where it’s for the audience. We’re still making this for us, so we wanna get that across to the audience: that we’re still figuring it out in the room, and you’re coming in and you get to see behind the curtain a little.

And so, you’ll hear the stage manager call people back from the break, or the intermissions will sound like they’re a 10-minute break. We’ve even had some sort of real, organic discussion: someone will say a word and someone else will correct their pronunciation because we’re all trying to stay on the same page with that.

So, we’ve worked with a few of these moments, all of the actors sort of cross-talking, breaking a scene open for a second and having a discussion that derails it. Then we get back on, just to remind us that we’re in a process–remind the audience that they’re watching, basically, a rehearsal that’s kind of been frozen in time. So, there are a few moments like that we’ve planned, and I’m hoping that the actors keep. We’ve been fortunate enough to have a group of people that have really bonded in a nice way, everybody gets along. We have a lot of fun in there, we joke a lot.

AYANNA THOMPSON And I know that you’ve all probably been in rooms in productions where something is so vibrant and alive in the rehearsal room and when you try and capture it onstage it just is like, “Ugh.” But it sounds like this is what you’re hoping you can keep–that the buoyancy of the play in the rehearsal room will be what you invite the audience to experience, potentially for the first time.

JAY O. SANDERS It’s up to us to keep the buoyancy. They must read that buoyancy, but we have to give it to them. If we’re taking it seriously, driving through it, they can’t do that. We have to give that to them.

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO Yeah, and I think it’s cool because you discover so much with an audience. They

bring that, right? We’re gonna discover what they find funny. Since it’s still so fresh, this material, the actors are gonna discover stuff. By adding the audience way too soon, we’re gonna learn a lot. And they’ll witness that.

JAY O. SANDERS Richard II is disadvantaged because you can’t put in fart jokes.

ERIC TUCKER Right, right. You could certainly probably try.

AYANNA THOMPSON Richard’s never farted!

JAY O. SANDERS Or never admitted to it.

AYANNA THOMPSON So, what scares you the most for this reading, and what excites you the most?

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO What scares me the most is… actually, to be honest, I’m doing this to be scared. I think that’s what Eric was talking with let’s take all the furniture away. That’s more terrifying. Let’s have no props. What the f– am I gonna do? I have no idea. And, to be honest, what an amazing opportunity to fail and really not have much fallout from it. What are we gonna learn from failing? What are we gonna learn from being terrified? And I think that is what I’m looking forward to.

SUSANNAH PERKINS Yeah, I love that very much. For me, I haven’t done as much Shakespeare as some other people in the room. What is so scary and exciting about doing it is the task of figuring out how to say it like you mean it, how to talk like a person talks, and, at the same time, preserve the things that are so beautiful about reading Shakespeare on the page. The speech that ends Richard’s life and the “sit upon the ground” speeches… I remember reading them both for the first time and thinking they were some of the most beautiful, strange pieces of English-language writing that I’ve ever read. And some of Falstaff’s turns of phrase are incredible ways of speaking. So, the scary and exciting thing is both figuring out ways to mean what I’m saying and preserving the beauty of the language, and I’m excited to continue to do that with this amazing group of people.

AYANNA THOMPSON Jay, how about you?

JAY O. SANDERS Oh, I’m not – I don’t care…

SUSANNAH PERKINS Jay is neither scared nor excited.

AYANNA THOMPSON Inhabiting his full Falstaffian persona.

Brenda Meaney, Cara Ricketts. Photo by Hollis King.

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

JAY O. SANDERS I get to do it as Falstaff. Talk about an audience for a fart show.

AYANNA THOMPSON They’re guaranteed to love you. I just wish there were more productions like this that were entering into Shakespeare with a sense of experiment and play, with less of the calcified, overbaked thing. For me, it sounds like the most exciting way to do it. I kinda wish there were gonna be reviews and a recording that we could access, because I think it would be one of those things that we would use in the clasroom a lot.

that kinda turns people off. And to see something that feels alive…

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO It’s sort of like when you go to see a show for their first night, and you go, “Wow, what’s going to go wrong?” The terror, the energy–that’s sort of what we’re doing.

JAY O. SANDERS I put myself all the way out and it always scares me, but it’s always what makes me the best that I can be. I know that’s the greatest reward. It was my choice to do Titus. They were asking me what I wanted to do and when I chose it, they said, “Wow, that’s… boy, that’s a hell of a choice. Why do you wanna do that?”

I said, “Because it scares the living crap out of me.” That’s where you know you’re gonna go learn something, challenge yourself, and bring more to the table. If you’re not scared by these major roles, you don’t realize what you’re getting into (or out of it).

At the same time, being challenged to think as fast as [the characters] do, to describe what wit is and then be witty within it, you have to feel stupid as you’re doing it because you go, “Wait, wait, wait, I’m not getting there as quickly as he’s getting there.” I have to be up to it. But you also know once you get there, it’s a ride like no other. You’re meeting Shakespeare and his idea of this character and bringing the best of yourself to think as fast as that person does and to feel as deeply as they do. It’s the great ride. It’s like embracing life on stage. It scares me, but it doesn’t scare me.

AYANNA THOMPSON It’s what acting is about, as you said.

JAY O. SANDERS For me, anyway. I just read a John Larroquette interview… I think he’s a very good actor, but he thinks of himself as a physical comedian and

said, “I never considered acting an art.” And I thought, “We got nothing to talk about. That’s all I think of it as.” Acting is art, and it is my life. When it’s not art, I’m not giving it enough. People think, “Eh, you just do this, you go there, you pick that up, and fall down, and that’s funny.” I may do just what you said, but it’s all connected to all those things that we’ve discovered and all of the dedication to doing it in that moment, to trying to be so present that it happens every night, however successful you are or aren’t. It is the desire to do that what makes it art, I believe.

AYANNA THOMPSON Well, Eric, how about you? What scares you the most, what excites you the most?

ERIC TUCKER Well, I think the only thing that scares me is if someone doesn’t show up one night. Jeffrey’s gonna call me and say, “Come read because you know the blocking and we’re just reading.” So, if someone gets COVID, I’m gonna be the one they call in, probably.

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO Richard II.

ERIC TUCKER No, no, no. But, I’m excited because like he said, there’s no reviews. Like Christian says, this is a great way to see where we fail. It’s gonna be a great opportunity. I can’t see all the performances. I wish I could. They also have to do three performances for kids of Henry IV , so I know that’s always scary, but I think kids are a great audience for Shakespeare.

ERIC TUCKER Well…we’ll see. So often, productions feel like they just thought which costumes would be cool and that’s the era they set it in. But they rehearsed only three weeks and had to work on all the fight bits, the dance, and this and that. And there’s no depth to it, it doesn’t do anything different than I’ve ever seen. I think that is the stuff

JAY O. SANDERS But the big quest is for clarity. When I come in every day, I don’t go, “Now, what is the next step?” I go back and look at the same thing I’ve been doing and I keep making it clearer. By the time it gets really, really clear, I’m ready to start throwing the ball back and forth in a different way. When you’re really clear on what you’re saying, they hear you better, my scene partner hears me better, and then I hear what they’re doing better. Then we’re playing tennis rather than stuck in language.

Left to Right: Heidi Armbruster, Michael Rogers, Krystal Sobaskie, Jordan Bellow. Photo by Hollis King.

Tom Pecinka, Jay O. Sanders. Photo by Hollis King.

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

So, the clarity, for me, is everything in this and how far we get with it. The best review you can have is a kid watching and going, “Sh-t, I wanna do that!” or “I wanna see more of that.” You want them waking up to what’s possible. That’s a challenge. We know when we’re in rehearsal and a scene starts to get going (clearer and better, more back-and-forth), you go, “Whoa, that’s starting to happen, isn’t it?” And that’s the excitement that we live for and come in for.

AYANNA THOMPSON “I do. I will.”

SUSANNAH PERKINS I came in with all these ideas because every time I’ve seen “I do. I will” it’s been very sentimental. I was like, “I’m gonna do it in this cool a-hole way where I’m like, ‘Yeah, I do, I will.’” And it’s been really, really hard not to look at Jay and cry every single time we’ve done it. You can have ideas about Shakespeare. Doing them is something very, very different.

JAY O. SANDERS But also, doing them with the people you’re doing them with.

SUSANNAH PERKINS Yeah, that’s right.

JAY O. SANDERS You can have four different Falstaffs, four different Hals, and those scenes will be different things. If they’re not, the people are dead. The whole point is to take the chemistry that we have and that we find–and that’s not preconceived because we’re just getting to know each other the same way as we’re getting to know the text–and ride that to somewhere that tells you where it wants to go.

You can make decisions about “Boy, I thought I heard you do this, and…,” “Oh, that’s a great idea, can we try that?” But even that–is that how it’s gonna stay? Who knows? The idea is to keep listening and recognize where relationships and dramatic tension are taking us.

AYANNA THOMPSON Maybe that’s another gift to us from Shakespeare–to learn to listen. I don’t know that we’re very good listeners.

JAY O. SANDERS Absolutely. People who don’t know how to do Shakespeare think it’s all about them saying some beautiful words. If you look at the scenes, they’re all answers to what the other person’s saying.

AYANNA THOMPSON All right. Eric, any last words for our readers?

JAY O. SANDERS I’m hoping for your last words.

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO What’s your last word?

JAY O. SANDERS Because you’re not gonna direct after.

ERIC TUCKER No, it’s probably just the end of my whole career. Well, a friend of mine said they wanted tickets but, “I’m afraid they’re all gonna go so fast.” It’s like, that’s nice.

AYANNA THOMPSON I think they will, too. I think they’ll go very fast. I think this is something that seems super exciting, and what New York needs at this moment.

JAY O. SANDERS Michael [Rogers] was just saying today that he hasn’t come back to theater before because he’s afraid in being in rooms of COVID. People all have their own relationship to what the pandemic is, and he’s venturing back and said, “Well, this feels good.”

I think the audience needs to feel that too. It’s not a big house, and we’re doing what we do that you can’t do on Zoom and on film. It’s that live crackle of it. I’m thinking there may well be a number of people who look at it and go, “Jesus, that’s how they should do it! Oh my God!” The excitement of the moment–not that it’s finished, but I recognize what it is that–

ERIC TUCKER It’s the spirit of this, that you can somehow keep that. I do think that one of the neat things about this is that it should have the effect of watching a new play being read because we haven’t beat it into submission or made it feel sterile.

It’s gonna be very fresh every time they do it. New audience, another night. They don’t know the lines, they have their books, they have each other, and that energy, like Christian says, the first night of anything is gonna feel like we’re looking at new works. How often does Shakespeare make you feel like that? You know what I mean? So I think it’s a really cool event and people are going to get something out of this. Certainly, this is not a way you get to hear Shakespeare very often and I think they’ll sit up and listen. I hope.

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

AYANNA THOMPSON Well, on that note, thank you all for your time and your fearlessness. I’m very, very excited for this, and I’m excited for the audiences, and, as you said, especially for the students. What a great first experience with Shakespeare.

JAY O. SANDERS The ideal thing would be if the older audiences feel like the students, you know what I mean? If they walk into it with that same thing of “What the f– is this? Oh, that was cool!” But, that whole discovery thing is ideally the best part about doing this..

AYANNA THOMPSON is a Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, and the Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies (ACMRS).

In 2021, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Thompson is the author of Blackface (Bloomsbury, 2021), Shakespeare in the Theatre: Peter Sellars (Arden Bloomsbury, 2018), Teaching Shakespeare with

Purpose: A Student-Centred Approach , co-authored with Laura Turchi (Arden Bloomsbury, 2016), Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (Routledge, 2008). She wrote the new introduction for the revised Arden3 Othello (Arden, 2016), and is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Race (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance (Palgrave, 2010), and Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance (Routledge, 2006). She is currently collaborating with Curtis Perry on the Arden4 edition of Titus Andronicus. Thompson serves as a Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at The Public Theater in New York, and currently serves on the boards of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the National Parks Arts Foundation, and Play On Shakespeare. She is a pastPresident of the Shakespeare Association of America.

Jordan Bellow, Susannah Perkins. Photo by Hollis King.

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

HEIDI ARMBRUSTER ( John of Gaunt/Duchess of York, Mistress Quickly ). New York premieres: Time Stands Still (Broadway), Disgraced (Lincoln Center), Lewiston/Clarkston (Rattlestick), Man From Nebraska (Second Stage), Poor Behavior (Primary Stages), Boy (Keen Company), Dov and Ali (Playwrights Realm), The Fifth Column (The Mint) and Sea of Tranquility (The Atlantic). Drama League nomination for Tea and Sympathy (Keen Company). Extensive regional credits including Scarecrow (written and performed by Heidi). Numerous film and TV credits including “Younger,” “Manifest” and “Partner Track.”

JORDAN BELLOW ( Bushy/Exton, Warwick ). New York: California (Clubbed Thumb); Gnit (Theatre for a New Audience); Ransom (Arts on Site); Interior (59E59); The Feels… KMS (New Ohio); Macbeth and Alkestis (The Connelly). Regional: Fisher Center at Bard, Westport Country Playhouse, Denver Center, Syracuse Stage, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Florida Studio Theatre and South Coast Repertory. Television: “Dickinson,” “Gotham,” “Orange is the New Black.”

CHRISTIAN CAMARGO (Richard II, Justice Shallow). Founding company member of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London. TFANA: Coriolanus (Karin Coonrod), Hamlet (David Esbjornson; Obie Award, Drama Desk nom.), Pericles (Trevor Nunn). Broadway: Romeo and Juliet, All My Sons, Skylight. BAM: directed by Sam Mendes in The Tempest and As You Like It. London: The Kid Stays in the Picture (Simon McBurney), Henry V, Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Films/ series: The Hurt Locker, K-19: The Widowmaker, The Twilight Saga, “See,” “Wormwood,” “Dexter.”

DIANE HEALY ( Stage Manager ). TFANA: A Doll’s House; The Father. With Bedlam: The Winter’s Tale, Hedda Gabler, The Crucible, Sense & Sensibility, Saint Joan, Hamlet, Pygmalion, Peter Pan, Cry Havoc!, Twelfth Night/What You Will . Has SM’d in NY with NAATCO, Clubbed Thumb, Radical Evolution/WP Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Mabou Mines, Primary Stages, Playwrights Realm, Barrow Street Theatre, Atlantic Theatre Co., LCT3, LaMama, The Civilians. Regionally: Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Folger Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, Oldcastle Theatre Company.

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

BYRON JENNINGS ( Duke of York/Duchess of Gloucester, Westmoreland/Francis/Silence ). Broadway: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, She Loves Me, You Can’t Take It With You, Macbeth, Arcadia, The Merchant of Venice, Inherit the Wind . Off-Broadway: Plenty, Waste, Don Juan, The Foreigner, Dealer’s Choice, Stuff Happens

BRENDA MEANEY (Scroop/Fitzwater, Worcester/Doll Tearsheet). Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink (Roundabout); Party Face (City Center); Little Gem (Irish Repertory Theatre); The Mountains Look Different, The New Morality (The Mint); Neil Labute Short Play Festival, Incognito (Manhattan Theatre Club). Regional: Venus in Fur, The Hard Problem (A.C.T.); Queens (La Jolla Playhouse); Caucasian Chalk Circle, Owners (YRT); And a Nightingale Sang... (Westport Country Playhouse). Film/television: forthcoming Fear the Night, There’s Always Hope, “FBI: Most Wanted,” “For Life,” “Hell on Wheels,” “Love/Hate” (RTÉ). BA, Trinity College Dublin; MFA, Yale School of Drama.

KELLY MERRITT ( Assistant Stage Manager ). Broadway: The Inheritance, Hillary and Clinton, The Ferryman, The Boys in the Band. Off-Broadway/NYC: Slave Play (NYTW) , SuperHero! (Houses on the Moon) . Regional: Enchanted April (STNJ), Soft Power, Bright Star, Archduke and Zoot Suit (CTG); A Funny Thing Happened… (Geffen Playhouse), Born for This. Love to her family for their endless encouragement and support!

AJAY NAIDU ( Northumberland, Bardolph/ Archbishop of York ). Theatre includes Hamlet (Sheen Center), The Kid Stays in the Picture (Royal Court), Indian Ink (Roundabout), Master and Margarita and Measure for Measure (Theatre Complicité), Little Flower of East Orange (The Public Theater), The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (National Actors Theatre), Darwaza (Labyrinth), Everyman (Steppenwolf). Film includes The Good Nurse, The Kindergarten Teacher, Office Space, SubUrbia and many more. Television includes “Extrapolations,” “WECrashed,” “Uncoupled,” “Blindspot,” “Billions,” “Friends From College,” “Deadbeat,” “Bored to Death,” “30 Rock,” “West Wing,” “The Sopranos.”

TOM PECINKA ( Henry Percy or “Hotspur” ). TFANA: He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, Timon of Athens Off-Broadway: Troilus and Cressida, Richard II (The Public); The Soldier’s Tale (Carnegie Hall); Torch Song (Second Stage). Regional: Ghosts, Member of the Wedding (Williamstown); Father Comes Home From the Wars (Yale Rep, A.C.T.); Arcadia (Yale Rep); Cloud 9, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Hartford Stage); Deathtrap, Design for Living, Cat and the Canary (Berkshire Theatre Festival). Current TV: "American Rust." Upcoming film: The Kill Room . Education: BA, Fordham University; MFA, Yale School of Drama. tompecinka.com

SUSANNAH PERKINS they/them ( Aumerle, Prince Hal ). Broadway: Network. Off- Broadway: Judgment Day (Park Avenue Armory), The Low Road (The Public), The Wolves (Lincoln Center/The Playwrights Realm) and The Rape of the Sabine Women by Grace B. Mathias (The Playwrights Realm). Regional: Night of the Iguana (A.R.T.). TV/film: “The Politician,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” Lapsis (SXSW), Enclosure, Snakeeater. BFA, NYU/Tisch. Obie and Drama Desk Awards.

JULIA RANDALL ( The Queen/Berkeley, Poins ) is thrilled to be working with TFANA and Eric Tucker. After completing her degree in drama at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Julia returned to NYC and starred in Mr. Toole at 59E59. TV/film credits include “Dose,” Who We Were and New Year’s Eve

CARA RICKETTS ( Mowbray, Lady Percy/ as cast ). Broadway: Time and the Conways . Regional theatre: Measure for Measure (TFANA), The Wild Party (Acting UpStage), Hedda Gabler (Necessary Angel), Constellations and Race (Canadian Stage) and several seasons as a leading lady at Canada’s esteemed Stratford Festival. TV: “The Resident” (FOX), “Anne With an E” (CBC/Netflix; ACTRA Award). Cara has also developed quite a fan base for her two leading roles in the Ubisoft games: the villainess Mickey in Far Cry New Dawn and Sayla in Far Cry Primal.

Left to Right: Christian Camargo, Heidi Armbruster, and Krystal Sobaskie. Photo by Hollis King.

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

MICHAEL ROGERS ( Green, Pistol ). Mr. Rogers has worked at theatres across the United States and internationally in roles varying from Titania, Othello, Dracula, Robert Mugabe (USA) and God (Italy). Most recently: Generations, Marley, The Call, The Merchant of Venice, The Winter’s Tale . On television Mr. Rogers has appeared on many of the major episodic shows. Most recently: “Madam Secretary” and “Alternatino.” Films: The Mosquito Coast, Weekend at Bernie’s 2, Side Streets, Dope Fiend, God’s Pocket, Inscape, Dance of the Quantum Cats, Moonfire Mr. Rogers is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama and a son of TFANA.

THOMAS JAY RYAN (Bolingbroke, Henry IV). Broadway: West Side Story, The Nap, The Crucible, In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play. Off-Broadway: Becky Nurse of Salem, Eureka Day, Dance Nation, The Amateurs, 10 Out of 12, The Lady From Dubuque, Venus, The Temperamentals, The Misanthrope and The Little Foxes. Films: Henry Fool (title role), Scenes From an Empty Church, Cryptozoo, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Legend of Bagger Vance, Burn Country, Teknolust, Strange Culture. Awards: Callaway, two Drama Desk Awards, Drama League, Gemini Award nominations.

JAMIE SANDERS ( Bagot, Mortimer/ Prince John/various ) is a New York City-based and raised actor. Credits: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Portland Center Stage and KC Repertory). The Belle’s Strategem, The Man of Mode and Much Ado (Sweet Tea Shakespeare), Stars in the House Presents Misalliance (Gingold Group).

JAY O. SANDERS ( The Gardener, Sir John Falstaff ) has been exploring Shakespeare his whole career. Starting in 2010, he collaborated with his wife, Maryann Plunkett, and playwright/director Richard Nelson on The Apple Family (including three Zoom plays), The Gabriels and The Michaels . Sanders played Uncle Vanya for the Hunter Theater Project, Cyrano de Bergerac at the Guthrie Theater and Nick Laine in Girl From the North Country on Broadway, and many films and television projects.

KRYSTAL SOBASKIE (Duke of Surrey, Nym/Lady Mortimer). TFANA debut. Theatre credits include Off-Broadway: Liar (WP and PopUP Theatrics). NYC: Inside, Broken City: Wall Street (PopUP). Workshops at The Lark, Lincoln Center’s Across a Crowded Room and Dixon Place. Regional: Antony and Cleopatra, Our Town, Urinetown (Connecticut Repertory Theatre), The Secret Garden. Film credits include Electric, Wing Wednesday. Training: University of Connecticut. Endless gratitude to Scott, Jack and the late Wynn Handman. Special thanks to Clemmie Evans for the Welsh.

DAKIN MATTHEWS ( Adapter ), besides acting on stage (over 250 productions including eight on Broadway, with Camelot upcoming) and screen (300 TV appearances and 30 films), is an award-winning playwright (L. A. Critics Circle Award for The Prince of L.A.), Shakespeare dramaturge (Drama Desk Award for Henry IV) and script translator (five Walker Reid Awards for translating Spanish Golden Age plays). He is also the creator/host of TFANA’s video series “Sheltering With Shakespeare,” a teacher of Shakespeare master classes around the world, a former artistic director of three theatres and an emeritus professor of English from Cal State East Bay.

ERIC TUCKER ( Director ). WSJ Director of the Year 2014/2021. Off-Broadway: The Winter’s Tale; Hedda Gabler; Persuasion; The Crucible; Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet; Pygmalion; Peter Pan; Vanity Fair; Sense and Sensibility (OffBroadway Alliance Award, Lortel nom Best Director; Drama League nom; Helen Hayes Awards Best Director, Best Production); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Drama League nom Best Revival, WSJ Best Classical Production 2015); Saint Joan (NY Times/Time Magazine Top 10; Off-Broadway Alliance Best Revival 2014); Hamlet (NY Times Top 10); Twelfth Night and What You Will (NYT Critic’s Picks); The Seagull (WSJ Best Classical Production 2014); The Merry Wives of Windsor (Two River); Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (OSF); Pericles (WSJ Best Classical Production 2017). Eric is artistic director of Bedlam.

JIMMY STUBBS ( Scenic Designer ) is a scenic and production designer based in NYC. He is excited to be returning to TFANA after serving as associate scenic designer to Riccardo Hernandez on Des Moines . Recent designs include Alcina (Yale Opera), Marisol (University of Rochester), The Juniors (Colgate University), Cabaret (Yale Dramatic Association), Fun Home (Yale School of Drama). He holds an MFA in set design from the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. jimmystubbs.com

NICOLE E. LANG (Lighting Designer) is a designer for performance based in New York City. Her recent designs include Hanging With Clarence (Park Avenue Armory), Amber/Blue (Belinda McGuire Dance Projects), Fallen Angels (Quinnipiac University), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Outcasts (American Academy of Dramatic Arts), Today Is My Birthday (Yale Repertory Theatre), When Day Comes (Crossroads Theatre Company), the moment before…, bodyssey (Yale Cabaret) and Fun Home (Yale University). nicoleelang.com

ANDREW WADE (Voice Director). The Royal Shakespeare Company: voice assistant 1987–2003, head of voice 1990–2003. Since 2003: The Acting Company, Guthrie Theater, Stella Adler Studio (master teacher voice andShakespeare). Currently: TFANA (resident voice and text director), The Public Theater (director of voice), Juilliard (adjunct faculty Drama Division). Broadway: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Parts One and Two (U.S. head of voice and dialect), King Lear with Glenda Jackson (voice coach), Matilda (director of voice and national tour), A Christmas Carol and tour, A Bronx Tale the Musical. Film: Shakespeare in Love. Workshops and lectures worldwide. Fellow of Rose Bruford College.

JONATHAN KALB (Resident Dramaturg) is professor of theatre at Hunter College, CUNY and is TFANA’s resident dramaturg. The author of five books on theatre, he has worked for more than three decades as a theatre scholar, critic, journalist and dramaturg. He has twice won The George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism and has also won the George Freedley Award for an outstanding theatre book from the Theatre Library Association. He often writes about theatre on his TheaterMatters blog at jonathankalb.com.

BLAKE ZIDELL & ASSOCIATES (Press Representative) is a Brooklyn-based public relations firm representing arts organizations and cultural institutions. Clients include St. Ann’s Warehouse, Playwrights Horizons, Signature Theatre, Soho Rep, National Sawdust, The Kitchen, Performance Space New York, PEN America, StoryCorps, Symphony Space, the Fisher Center at Bard, Peak Performances, Irish Arts Center, the Merce Cunningham Trust, the Onassis Foundation, Taylor Mac, Page 73, The Playwrights Realm, PlayCo and more.

Christian Camargo and Julia Randall. Photo by Hollis King..

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE LEADERSHIP

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, this is Theatre for a New Audience’s (TFANA) 43rd season. Through its productions of Shakespeare and other new plays, humanities initiatives and programs in NYC public schools, TFANA creates adventurous dialogues with diverse audiences. TFANA has produced 33 of Shakespeare’s 38 plays alongside an international mix of classical and contemporary drama; promotes ongoing artistic development through its Merle Debuskey Studio Fund; and in 2001, growing from a collaboration with Cicely Berry, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s director of voice, TFANA became the first American theatre company invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the RSC.

ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION (Equity), founded in 1913, is the U.S. labor union that represents more than 50,000 actors and stage managers. Equity seeks to foster the art of live theatre as an essential component of society and advances the careers of its members by negotiating wages, working conditions and providing a wide range of benefits including health and pension plans. Actors’ Equity is a member of the AFL-CIO and is affiliated with FIA, an international organization of performing arts unions. #EquityWorks

STAFF FOR RICHARD II & HENRY IV WORKSHOPS

Covid-19 Safety Manager.......................Joana Tsuhlares

Head Rigger...............................................Joseph Galan

Head Carpenter

Axt

Carpenters ............................Cory Asinofsky, Leon Axt, Stuart Chapin, Mark D’Agostino, Joseph Galan, Tobias Segal, Daniel Sullivan

Production Electricians...........................Jimmy Dewhurst, Akvinder Kaur

Electricians.............................Rhylke Caputo, Mike Carey, Kevin Malloy, Tony Mulanix, Bonnie Puk, Noah Stape Light Board Programmer & Operator.......Paul T. Kennedy

CREDITS

Properties provided by The Public Theater.

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. Awards: 2003 John Houseman Award from The Acting Company; 2004 Gaudium Award from Breukelein Institute; 2019 Obie Lifetime Achievement and TFANA’s 2020 Samuel H. Scripps.

DOROTHY RYAN (Managing Director) joined Theatre for a New Audience in 2003 after a ten-year fundraising career with the 92nd Street Y and Brooklyn Museum. Ryan began her career in classical music artist management and also served as company manager and managing leader for several regional opera companies. She is a Brooklyn Women of Distinction honoree and serves as treasurer of the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance.

Polonsky Shakespeare Center.

Photo © David Sundberg/Esto.

Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage.

Photo by Francis Dzikowski/OTTO.

Henry IV Pt. 2, V. III, "Silence singing at Justice Shallow's house in Gloucestershire" / J.E. Buckley, 1871. Folger Shakespeare Library.

ABOUT THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

About Theatre for a New Audience

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Board Chair

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE MAJOR SUPPORTERS

STAFF

Founding Artistic Director

Jeffrey Horowitz

Managing Director Dorothy Ryan

Interim General Manager

Mott/Fischer Productions

Director of Institutional Advancement

James J. Lynes

Finance Director Mary Sormeley

Education Director Lindsay Tanner

Capital Campaign Director

George Brennan

Director of Marketing & Communications

Edward Carlson

Facilities Director Rashawn Caldwell

Company Manager Molly Burdick

Theatre Manager Lawrence Dial

Production Manager Brett Anders

Box Office Manager Allison Byrum

Marketing Manager Angela Renzi

Associate Director of Development

Sara Billeaux

Artistic Associate Peter J. Cook

Associate to the Founding Artistic Director

Allison Benko

Finance Associate Harmony Fiori

Grants Associate Emmy Ritchey

Development Associate Jake Larimer

Development Associate Olivia Laskin

Facilities Associate Rafael Hurtado

New Deal Program Coordinator

Zhe Pan

Coordinator, Administration & Humanities|Studio Programming

Nadiya Atkinon

House Managers

Nancy Gill Sanchez, Nyala Hall, Regina Pearsall, Adjani Reed

Press Representative

Blake Zidell & Associates

Resident Director Arin Arbus

Resident Casting Director

Jack Doulin

Resident Dramaturg Jonathan Kalb

Resident Distinguished Artist

John Douglas Thompson

Resident Voice and Text Director

Andrew Wade

TFANA COUNCIL OF SCHOLARS

Tanya Pollard, Chair

Jonathan Kalb, Alisa Solomon, Ayanna Thompson

Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, the mission of Theatre for a New Audience is to be home for Shakespeare and other contemporary authors. The Theatre is dedicated to the ongoing search for a living, human theatre and forging an immediate exchange with an audience that is always new and different from the last one. With Shakespeare as its guide, the Theatre builds a dialogue that spans centuries between the language and ideas of Shakespeare and diverse authors, past and present. An internationally respected producer, the Theatre develops and mounts productions that examine and illuminate the contemporary significance of classic plays and modern dramatic masterworks. In addition to its world-class productions, the Theatre engages its community through free Humanities programs for general audiences, extensive creative development opportunities for artists, and the largest in-depth arts in education programs to introduce Shakespeare and classic drama to New York City Public School students.

Theatre for a New Audience Education Programs

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 New York State Common Core Learning Standards for English Language Arts. Begun in 1984, our programs have served more than 135,000 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 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.

Robert E. Buckholz

Vice Chair

Kathleen C. Walsh

President

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.

Jeffrey Horowitz

FoundingArtisticDirector

Vice President and Secretary

Dorothy Ryan

Managing Director

Executive Committee

Robert E. Buckholz

Constance Christensen

Jeffrey Horowitz

Seymour H. Lesser

Larry M. Loeb

Audrey Heffernan Meyer

Philip R. Rotner

Kathleen C. Walsh

Josh Weisberg

Members

F. Murray Abraham*

Arin Arbus*

Alan Beller

John Berendt*

Bianca Vivion Brooks*

Ben Campbell

Robert Caro*

Sharon Dunn*

Riccardo Hernandez*

Kathryn Hunter*

Dana Ivey*

Tom Kirdahy*

Harry J. Lennix*

Catherine Maciariello*

Marc Polonsky

Joseph Samulski*

Daryl D. Smith

Susan Stockel

Michael Stranahan

John Douglas Thompson*

John Turturro*

Frederick Wiseman*

*Artistic Council

Emeritus

Francine Ballan

Sally Brody

William H. Burgess III

Dr. Charlotte K. Frank

Caroline Niemczyk

Janet C. Olshansky

Theodore C. Rogers

Mark Rylance*

Monica G.S. Wambold

Jane Wells

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 endowment, please contact James Lynes, Director of Institutional Advancement, at 212-229-2819 x29, or by email at jlynes@tfana.org

Deloitte and Bloomberg Philanthropies are the 2022-2023 Season Sponsors.

Theatre for a New Audience’s productions and education programs are made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts; Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.partnership with the City Council.

PRINCIPAL BENEFACTORS

($100,000 and up)

Bloomberg Philanthropies

Jerome L. Greene Foundation Fund in the New York Community Trust

The SHS Foundation

The Shubert Foundation, Inc.

The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc.

U.S. Small Business Administration

LEADING BENEFACTORS

($50,000 and up)

Deloitte & Touche LLP

The Howard Gilman Foundation, Inc.

The Stockel Family Foundation

The Whiting Foundation

MAJOR BENEFACTORS

($20,000 and up)

The Arnow Family Fund

The Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation

The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels

Foundation

The Great Island Foundation

The Hearst Corporation

The DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund

Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP

Latham & Watkins LLP

The Polonsky Foundation

The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation

The Starry Night Fund

SUSTAINING BENEFACTORS

($10,000 and up)

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP

The Howard Bayne Fund

Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc.

The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation

Sidney E. Frank Foundation

Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP

Hughes, Hubbard & Reed LLP

The J.M. Kaplan Fund

King & Spalding LLP

McDermott Will & Emery

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP

Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison

The Ponce De Leon Foundation

May and Samuel Rudin Foundation Inc.

Sarah I. Schieffelin Residuary Trust

Select Equity Group, Inc.

Sidley Austin LLP

The Speyer Family Foundation

Michael Tuch Foundation, Inc.

PRODUCERS CIRCLE— ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S SOCIETY

($5,000 and up)

Axe-Houghton Foundation

The Bay and Paul Foundations

The Bulova Stetson Fund

The Ettinger Foundation

The Claire Friedlander Family Foundation

Litowitz Foundation, Inc.

Marta Heflin Foundation

Richenthal Foundation

The Venable Foundation

PRODUCERS CIRCLE—EXECUTIVE

($2,500 and up)

Foley Hoag LLP

Irving Harris Foundation

Lucille Lortel Foundation

Proskauer Rose LLP

Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles

The Venable Foundation

PRODUCERS CIRCLE—ASSOCIATE ($1,000 and up)

Actors’ Equity Association

The Grace R. and Alan D. Marcus Foundation

Asha and D.V. Nayak Fund

The Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust

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.