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

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.

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.

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

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… 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.

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."

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

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

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.

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ABOUT THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

Dialogues Looking For Legitimacy In Richard Ii And Henry Iv

Looking For Legitimacy In Richard Ii And Henry Iv Tanya Pollard

Looking For Legitimacy In Richard Ii And Henry Iv Tanya Pollard

INTERVIEW EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

AYANNA THOMPSON Why Richard II and Henry IV?

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

EXPLORING SHAKESPEARE'S HISTORIES AYANNA THOMPSON

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ABOUT THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

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