360° Viewfinder: TIMON OF ATHENS by Theatre for a New Audience

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

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TABLE OF C ON T E N T S 3 Synopsis 4

Dialogues: Timon of Athens and Gender by Jonathan Kalb

Biography: William Shakespeare

Biography: Thomas Middleton

Dialogues: Unkind Timon by Tanya Pollard

Excerpt: Cicero, On Friendship by Mario DiGangi

16 "We Are Born to Do Benefits": Simon Godwin and Kathryn Hunter in Conversation with Richard McCoy 24

Songs of Theatre for a New Audience's Timon of Athens

Cast and Creative Team

About Theatre For a New Audience 33

Leadership

Mission and Programs

Major Supporters

Timon of Athens is a co-production of Theatre for a New Audience and Shakespeare Theatre Company in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Timon of Athens is sponsored by Deloitte. Endowment support is provided by The Howard Gilman Foundation Fund for Classic Drama. This production is supported in part by an award from 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. Additional support is provided by Constance Christensen and Leila Maw Straus.

Notes Front Cover: Art by Milton Glaser, Inc. This Viewfinder will be periodically updated with additional information. Last updated January 17, 2020.

Credits Timon of Athens 360° | Edited by Tatianna Casas Quiñonez & Peter Cook Resident Dramaturg: Jonathan Kalb | Council of Scholars Chair: Ayanna Thompson | Designed by: Milton Glaser, Inc. Copyright 2020 by Theatre for a New Audience. All rights reserved. With the exception of classroom use by teachers and individual personal use, no part of this Viewfinder may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Some materials herein are written especially for our guide. Others are reprinted with permission of their authors or publishers.

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SYNOPSIS

ady Timon is a kind and wealthy Athenian who is generous to a fault. She bounteously feasts, bails out, and bestows gifts on her friends and never heeds her steward Flavius’s warnings that she is spending beyond her means. The philosopher Apemantus attends her banquet and berates all the guests as flatterers and parasites. One of them is Alcibiades, an activist who asks Timon to support her cause—stalled in the Senate—of helping the masses of suffering, dispossessed people living outside the city walls. When Timon’s creditors grow impatient and call in their debts, she must finally admit she is bankrupt and asks her friends for relief. They all refuse her, each making a different excuse. Disgusted, Timon invites them all to another banquet and, instead of food, serves them bowls of blood. She then abandons her sumptuous home, curses humanity, and withdraws to live as a hermit in the woods. Flavius vows to follow and continue serving her. Digging for roots in exile, Timon finds a box of buried treasure. She is suddenly wealthy again yet is now a silver-tongued misanthrope, railing ceaselessly about the vileness of mankind. Alcibiades visits and explains that she has become the leader of a rebellion of the dispossessed. Timon gives her money in the hope Alcibiades’s rebels will ransack Athens. She also gives money to thieves on the condition that they too use it to plunder the city; they leave convinced instead to give up thievery. Apemantus visits and measures his cynical wit against Timon’s; they part unreconciled. Only Flavius, whose honesty and loyalty are clear even to the disillusioned Timon, leaves with a tender word. When the rebellion threatens to overrun Athens, the Senators appeal to Timon for help, promising her restored wealth and “special dignities.” She suggests they all hang themselves on the tree outside her cave. As Alcibiades and her followers surround the Senators, news arrives that Timon has taken her own life. Alcibiades promises to rule peacefully if the city will forgive the rebels and treat them justly. Kathryn Hunter (Lady Timon) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

TIMON OF ATHENS

DIALOGUES

TIMON OF ATHENS AND GENDER

JONATHAN KALB

Kathryn Hunter (Lady Timon) and the Company in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

imon of Athens is not one of the Shakespeare plays like Twelfth Night or As You Like It in which fanciful male-female disguises push gender to the fore as a central concern. It is a relatively straightforward, parable-like tale about misconstrued love, faithless friends, greed and ingratitude that finds its complexity in a strange mixture of satire and tragedy and a protracted depiction of extreme outrage. By reconceiving the title character as a woman, however, Simon Godwin has elevated the place of gender in our experience. It becomes, in this production, a potent tool of illumination, a surprising transformational lens that invites us to see important things in a classic drama we wouldn’t otherwise see, or deem important. Godwin’s staging is not gender-queer, i.e. not a deliberately disruptive effort to unbalance all its 4

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straight-laced spectators. Nor is it gender-blind like, say, the “breeches” Hamlets of the 19th century, or the many all-female Shakespeares seen in recent years that treat the male roles as male even though women play them. Kathryn Hunter, the famously transformative star of Godwin’s Timon, has herself played Lear and Richard III as men in the past. Godwin’s Timon of Athens is rather a thought experiment that seeks to draw out the pith of this notoriously difficult and rebarbative play by switching its central figure’s gender. It asks how our view of an iconically bitter figure might change by imagining a “him” as a “her.” Timon’s behavior in the original play (probably co-written around 1606 with Thomas Middleton) is so over-the-top that his name long ago became

TIMON OF ATHENS AND GENDER

an adjective. “Timonist” has been used since the mid 19th century to mean bitterly misanthropic. The character is a noble spendthrift whose reckless generosity is enjoyed by his friends until he goes bankrupt, after which they summarily drop him. He reacts to that betrayal with another form of excess, pouring out torrents of mordantly mellifluous invective that he refuses to temper or qualify. This river of gall is the main reason why many critics have described the work as uniquely modern. Making the character an aristocratic lady forces us to ask how such extreme intemperance—in both its positive and negative aspects—might be illuminated, possibly even better understood, if its bearer is female. Hunter’s Timon wears women’s clothes and uses “she” and “her” pronouns. The same is true of Alcibiades, played by Elia Monte-Brown, the young activist-turned-rebel (a soldier-turned-rebel in the original) who tries unsuccessfully to enlist the selfexiled Timon in her cause and in the end brings heartless Athens to its knees. Everyone who sees this production will decide for themselves where the gender-switches are and aren’t significant. Here are some places they might look.

JONATHAN KALB

Early on Hunter’s Timon preens over a necklace that a flattering jeweler is trying to sell her (“You mend the jewel by wearing it”). Does this momentary indulgence make her appear more vain than male Timons do when preening over a ring? A short while later she refuses to let a rich friend repay bail money she fronted him (“none can truly say he gives if he receives”). Does this munificence strike us as especially naïve or childish because Timon is female? And if so, does that mean we are in the grip of the old shibboleth that women are too emotional to handle money prudently? What about the improbable devotion of Timon’s faithful steward Flavius, played by John Rothman, who weeps when she finally faces her insolvency and vows to serve her even after she runs off to the woods to become a hermit? Does this relationship seem more sexualized to us with a male Flavius and a female Timon than it does when merely a pair of old men are involved? And what about the philosopher Apemantus’s efforts to reach Timon with smart-alec cynicism? Apemantus is played in this production by the

John Rothman (Flavius) and Kathryn Hunter (Lady Timon) and the Company in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

TIMON OF ATHENS

TIMON OF ATHENS AND GENDER

accomplished comic Arnie Burton as a queer social outsider who tries to use Beckettian slapstick and seriocomic, nihilistic cross-talk to bring Timon round to his view of humanity. The tactic doesn’t work. Nor do the efforts of Alcibiades to woo Timon to her political cause. We may ask: do the adjusted identities of these supporting characters possibly make us trust them more, root more enthusiastically for them in their efforts to socialize Timon? Perhaps most interesting of all is the dimension Timon’s femaleness adds to the mystery of the character’s core identity, the root cause of the distorted understanding of benevolence (call it a personality flaw?) that pushes the play’s comedy into tragedy. Timon is fixated on giving rather than receiving, incapable of taking anything from others, including

JONATHAN KALB

pity or sympathy after she loses everything. The poet W.H. Auden once wrote perceptively that “Behind this behavior we see certain things that are not wholly unselfish: a desire to be in a superior position and play the mother, as well as a fear that one is in a weak position, unworthy of being loved for oneself. One must not take because one does not deserve.” Kathryn Hunter’s Timon is, to all appearances, unmarried and childless. Yet perhaps her femaleness alone is enough to remind us of this compelling resentful mother idea, which accents and expands the play like a perfectly placed shadow. Another frame of reference for Timon’s social blindness might be the hierarchy of love described by C.S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves. Timon

Left: Kathryn Hunter (Lady Timon) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Right: Arnie Burton (Apemantus) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photos by Gerry Goodstein.

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TIMON OF ATHENS AND GENDER

regards giving as a one-way, performative act, measuring its value, one could say, only by the impossibly exalted standards of agape, a lofty, disinterested, Christ-like sort of benevolence that Lewis dubs the highest love. The earthier, interdependent sorts of love that mostly motivate and bind others—the romantic attachment of eros, say, the friend-bond of philios, or the parent-child bond of storge—are incoherent and inadequate to Timon, being messy processes of give-and-take with nebulous balance sheets that people must keep themselves. Timon, in this sense, would be God. All love must be agape or it is worthless. Flavius touches on this absolutism when he chides Timon: “the world is but a word;/ Were it all yours to give it in a breath,/ How quickly were it gone!”

JONATHAN KALB

At the end of his production, Simon Godwin makes this religious conceit explicit with a series of staging references to Jesus, the crucifixion, and the Pietà. The tone of this sequence is ambiguous: satire shading into the solemn, melancholy and grievous. In any event, it is extraordinarily resonant, and bound to fire some people’s imaginations with thoughts of what it might mean, at this moment in history, to liken the Lamb of God to a bitterly misanthropic female. • JONATHAN KALB (Production Dramaturg) is Professor of Theater at Hunter College, CUNY, and TFANA’s Resident Dramaturg. The author of five books on theater, he has worked for more than three decades as a theater scholar, critic, journalist, and dramaturg. He curates and hosts the theater-review-panel series TheaterMatters at HERE Arts Center and has twice won The George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. He has also won the George Freedley Award for an outstanding theater book from the Theatre Library Association. He often writes about theater on his TheaterMatters blog (at www.jonathankalb.com).

Kathryn Hunter (Lady Timon) and the Company in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

TIMON OF ATHENS

BIOGRAPHY

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Portraits of Shakespeare. Art by Milton Glaser, Inc.

he most celebrated and widely produced of the world’s great playwrights, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was born and raised in the small country town of Stratford-upon-Avon, where his parents were prominent citizens, though his father, a tanner and glove-maker, seems to have suffered financial reverses around the time young William’s formal education apparently ceased in 1577. He married a local girl, Anne Hathaway, in 1582, and over the next decade the marriage produced three children. Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, died at age 11, in 1596; his daughters Judith and Susanna survived him. How and why Shakespeare entered the theatrical profession is unclear. He seems to have come to London in the late 1580s, and quickly made himself indispensable as a reviser of old plays and a supplier of new ones. By 1594, he had become a shareholder, along with the prominent actor Richard Burbage and the latter’s business-manager brother, Cuthbert, in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, one of the dominant theatre companies of its day, popular with the public and frequently in demand for performances at Queen Elizabeth’s court. In the reign of her successor, King James I, the troupe was officially taken under royal protection and became the King’s Men. While he appeared regularly in works by others, Shakespeare’s principal function seems to have been turning out new plays for his companies. Working in all the standard genres of the time—tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and episodes from British history—he rapidly developed both remarkable expertise and a startlingly individual, innovative style. Shakespeare retired from the King’s Men around 1612, spending the last years of his life with his family in Stratford, where he died in 1616. His plays have never been off the stage. Theatres return to them time and again for their brilliant storytelling, theatrical excitement, incisive character expression and memorably intense poetry. To this day, Shakespeare is still the most performed, translated, adapted, quoted, analyzed and discussed author in the entire history of dramatic literature. Figures from his plays like Hamlet, Falstaff, Lear, Macbeth, Rosalind, Viola, Shylock, Prospero, and Duke Vincentio have virtually taken on an independent existence in the world. 8

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BIOGRAPHY

THOMAS MIDDLETON

Thomas Middleton, depicted in the frontispiece of Two New Plays, a 1657 edition of Women Beware Women and More Dissemblers Besides Women. Wikimedia Commons.

ritish Renaissance playwright Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) wrote comedy, history, tragedy, and tragicomedy. After Middleton’s father died in 1586, his mother, Anne, married a man who had lost money in Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke venture. Thomas Middleton started writing as a student at Queens College, Oxford. He and his wife, Magdalene Marbecke, sister of the actor Thomas Marbecke, settled in Surrey in 1608, and Middleton was appointed city chronologer in 1620. Middleton wrote plays for various theater companies, among them Prince Henry’s Men, Paul’s Boys, King’s Men, and Blackfriars. Some of his plays were cowritten with other playwrights, including Thomas Dekker, William Rowley, and John Webster; he collaborated with William Shakespeare on Timon of Athens. In addition to plays, Middleton wrote pamphlets and political commentary. One of his first pamphlets, The Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets, was published in 1601; he also published a mock almanac, The Owl’s Almanac (1618). Middleton’s earliest recorded play, The Phoenix, was presented at court in 1603. His other titles, some in collaboration, include The Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinary (1603), which depicted the effects of the 1603 plague; The Honest Whore (1604); A Trick to Catch the Old One (1605); The Roaring Girl, or Moll Cutpurse (1611); and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613)—which had 11 female characters. His most famous play of the time was A Game of Chess (1624), an allegory of 1620s English history presented at the Globe Theatre in 1624. It ran for nine days and was closed after the ambassador of Spain complained about it. It appears that Middleton stopped writing plays after A Game of Chess. Biographical sketch courtesy of The Poetry Foundation. TIMON OF ATHENS

DIALOGUES

UNKIND TIMON

TANYA POLLARD

Kathryn Hunter (Lady Timon) and the Company in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

imon of Athens opens with a celebration of its protagonist’s kindness. As Timon lavishes money, gifts, and hospitality on his friends, a guest notes that “he outgoes/ The very heart of kindness.” In offering “kind admittance,” Timon also describes his guests as “so kind,” but when his fortunes change, his generosity is not reciprocated. Despite acknowledging that “I have received some/ small kindnesses from him,” Lucilius explains that “I have no power to be kind.” As Timon’s requests are repeatedly rebuffed, the vocabulary of kindness repeats obsessively, reverberating until it become almost emptied of meaning. “’Tis lack of kindly warmth they are not kind,” Timon complains of his former friends. Announcing his decision to abandon Athens for the wilderness, he insists that “he shall find/ The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.” “I am Misanthropos,” he eventually announces, “and hate mankind.” Versions of the word “kind” appear 36 times in Timon, more than in any other play by Shakespeare. King Lear, written probably the same year as Timon, lags behind with 27 instances, and only a small handful of other plays are even in the teens. 10

Etymologically related to “kin” and “kindred,” “kind” originally referred to natural, innate qualities associated with birth and family. By Shakespeare’s time the word had developed its current meanings of generous, gracious, and courteous, but it still kept its earlier associations with kin. When Hamlet warily pronounces Claudius “A little more than kin, and less than kind,” he plays on the tension between the two near synonyms. Timon similarly invokes birth when he recognizes his former friends’ unkindness; he pronounces “ingratitude in them hereditary.” Unkindness, in Shakespeare’s world, implicates family. Kindness is a problem in Timon: there is too much, and then there is none. This problem underpins something even stranger about the play. Alone among Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists, Timon has no family. Tragedy conjures isolation, but in Shakespeare’s tragedies, misery usually has plenty of company. Lear has three daughters; Titus has a daughter and several sons left of his original twenty-five; Othello, Macbeth, Caesar, and Anthony are married; Hamlet lives with his mother and talks with his father’s ghost; Romeo and Juliet

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UNKIND TIMON are surrounded by parents and cousins. Even Coriolanus, who wishes to “stand,/ As if a man were author of himself/ And knew no other kin,” has a mother, wife, and son. Family members are not these characters’ only companions, nor always those to whom they are closest, but their constant presence conveys an inescapable set of personal connections. Against this backdrop, Timon’s lack of either kin or companionship is striking, and terrible. With its absence of close personal ties, the play brings the suffering of Shakespearean tragedies into the cynical, mercenary world of city comedies by Thomas Middleton, the darkly witty younger playwright who co-wrote Timon with Shakespeare. Timon’s crowded banquet hall makes it hard to see at first how alone he is. He describes his apparent profusion of personal ties in the language of family. “O what a precious comfort ’tis,” he

TANYA POLLARD

reflects of his friends, “to have so many, like brothers commanding one another’s fortunes!” As his reference to fortunes suggests, though, Timon has built his family of money alone. When Lucilius rejects his plea for help, an onlooker says, “Timon has been this lord’s father,/ And kept his credit with his purse,/ Supported his estate.” The inseparability of Timon’s personal and financial investments resonates especially in the play’s language of bonds. When Timon helps a father pay his daughter’s dowry, he observes that “To build his fortune I will strain a little, / For ’tis a bond in men.” Similarly, when he agrees to pay his friend Ventidius’s debt, the messenger observes, “Your lordship ever binds him.” Ventidius later in turn tells Timon, “in grateful virtue I am bound/ To your free heart”, and when another guest exclaims, “We are so virtuously bound,” Timon replies, “And so/ Am I to you.”

Zachary Fine (Painter) and the Company in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

TIMON OF ATHENS

UNKIND TIMON Timon seems to be surrounded by strong personal bonds, but they rest on financial bonds that he cannot redeem. When his debts come due, his human investments prove fragile. In his attempt to build kinship ties through money, Timon recalls the precarious speculation of The Merchant of Venice, another play centered on the fallout from unreliable bonds. When Shylock invokes the biblical Jacob’s cunning husbandry of Laban’s flock, Antonio retorts “is your gold and silver ewes and rams?” In Shylock’s reply—“I cannot tell; I make it breed as fast.”— money mimics procreation, magically replacing the messy work of making family. In different ways, money performs the same illusion for Timon, who uses his wealth to produce a virtual family, filled with simulacra of brothers, fathers, and sons.

TANYA POLLARD

Oddly, there are no mothers in Timon’s imagined family, or in the play at large. Timon is unique not only in its protagonist’s isolation, but in its nearabsence of women. Shakespeare’s plays are notoriously gender-imbalanced: his playing company, another all-male virtual family built of economic investments, typically showcased its adult male actors more than the boy apprentices who played female roles. But Timon is extreme even in this context: no other play by Shakespeare has so few lines spoken by female characters. The only female figures who appear onstage are the ladies dressed as Amazons at Timon’s early banquet, and the two whores on whom Timon unleashes a violently misogynistic rant when they visit his cave near the end of the play. Together, they speak eleven of the play’s more than two thousand

Dave Quay (Lucullus), Daniel Pearce (Sempronius), and Helen Cespedes (Flaminia) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

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UNKIND TIMON lines. Timon—almost certainly written for and acted by Shakespeare’s leading actor Richard Burbage— speaks almost half of the play’s lines. What happens, then, when Timon becomes female, as in this production? Despite its pervasively male world, the play hints at a kind of androgyny in its main character. Timon’s “bounty” and “plenteous bosom” suggest a quasi-maternal status, a source of support and nurture like the often-invoked Lady Fortune. Timon’s emotional investment in an artificially created family also evokes a longstanding tradition of women as privileged caretakers of kinship bonds. But if a male Timon temporarily masks his isolation by presenting himself as a benevolent patron, foregoing an actual flesh and blood family for a world of money is even more shocking for a female protagonist, laying bare the play’s disruption of tragic conventions. Regendering Timon also underscores the character’s links with the play’s odd female figures; like Timon, the Amazons resisted traditional family structures, and Alcibiades’ whores make no pretense of hiding the economic transactions underpinning their intimacies.

TANYA POLLARD

If one goal of performing old plays is to make them new and strange again, rewriting Shakespeare’s originally male casting offers a powerful tool for jolting audiences out of preconceived expectations and into fresh confrontations with the plays’ words and stories. Unencumbered by family, almost empty of female figures, and co-authored by a playwright with a very different voice, Timon is singular among Shakespeare’s tragedies. The play should startle us. Its preoccupation with being unkind, or un-kinned, reflects on its breaks from its own theatrical family, as well as on Timon’s broken bonds. Breaking its mold is, paradoxically, in keeping with its own interrogation of ties that bind. • TANYA POLLARD is Professor of English at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her books include Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages (2017), Drugs and Theater in Early Modern England (2005), and Shakespeare’s Theater: A Sourcebook (2003). She has co-edited Reader in Tragedy (2019) with Marcus Nevitt; Homer and Greek Tragedy in Early Modern England’s Theaters (2017) and Milton, Drama, and Greek Texts (2016) with Tania Demetriou; and Shakespearean Sensations: Experiencing Literature in Early Modern England (2013) with Katharine Craik. A former Rhodes Scholar, she has received fellowships from the NEH, Whiting, and Mellon foundations and the Warburg Institute.

Kathryn Hunter (Lady Timon) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

TIMON OF ATHENS

EXCERPT

CICERO, ON FRIENDSHIP [DE AMICITIA]

MARIO DiGANGI

The most influential text about friendship in the sixteenth century, On Friendship was printed multiple times in English-language translation, and would almost certainly have been a familiar work to Shakespeare. Cicero’s first principle of friendship is that “friendship can only exist between good men.” In Timon of Athens, Timon uses the language of male friendship toward the objects of his generosity, but discovers that his friends abandon him in his time of need. Do Timon’s relationships fall short of Cicero’s ideal? Or is the separation of friendship from selfinterest less a noble ideal than a risible delusion? And as Timon’s friends evaporate, and his bewilderment blossoms into rage, Shakespeare seems to ask: What, if anything, can account for the failure of true friendship? Excerpt from Cicero. On Friendship, translated by E. S. Shuckburgh. Vol. IX, Part 1. The Harvard Classics. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14; Bartleby.com, 2001. www.bartleby.com/9/1/

Bust of Cicero (1st century BC). Palazzo Nuovo, Museo Capitolini. Photo credit: José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0.

icero [Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 BCE] was a brilliant orator, philosopher, and statesman of the Roman Republic. His treatise On Friendship [De Amicitia] is written as a dialogue among three Romans; they discuss such topics as the causes, pleasures, and ethics of friendship. In the excerpts below, Cicero defines friendship as a loving, honest relationship between two virtuous men who enjoy “complete accord” in all matters; friendship is never motivated by material need or self-interest, although true friends do help and serve each other in various ways out of mutual affection. 14

Now this truth seems clear to me, that nature has so formed us that a certain tie unites us all, but that this tie becomes stronger from proximity. So it is that fellow-citizens are preferred in our affections to foreigners, relations to strangers; for in their case Nature herself has caused a kind of friendship to exist, though it is one which lacks some of the elements of permanence. Friendship excels relationship in this, that whereas you may eliminate affection from relationship, you cannot do so from friendship. Without it relationship still exists in name, friendship does not. You may best understand this friendship by considering that, whereas the merely natural ties uniting the human race are indefinite, this one is so concentrated, and confined to so narrow a sphere, that affection is ever shared by two persons only, or at most by a few. Now friendship may be thus defined: a complete accord on all subjects human and divine, joined

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EXCERPT: CICERO, ON FRIENDSHIP [DE AMICITIA] with mutual good will and affection. And with the exception of wisdom, I am inclined to think nothing better than this has been given to man by the immortal gods. There are people who give the palm to riches or to good health, or to power and office, many even to sensual pleasures. This last is the ideal of brute beasts; and of the others we may say that they are frail and uncertain, and depend less on our own prudence than on the caprice of fortune. Then there are those who find the “chief good” in virtue. Well, that is a noble doctrine. But the very virtue they talk of is the parent and preserver of friendship, and without it friendship cannot possibly exist.... Well, then, it has very often occurred to me when thinking about friendship, that the chief point to be considered was this: is it weakness and want of means that make friendship desired? I mean, is its object an interchange of good offices, so that each may give that in which he is strong, and receive that in which he is weak? Or is it not rather true that, although this is an advantage naturally belonging to friendship, yet its original cause is quite other, prior in time, more noble in character, and springing more directly from our nature itself? The Latin word for friendship—amicitia—is derived from that for love—amor; and love is certainly the prime mover in contracting mutual affection. For as to material advantages, it often happens that those are obtained even by men who are courted by a mere show of friendship and treated with respect from interested motives. But friendship by its nature admits of no feigning, no pretence: as far as it goes it is both genuine and spontaneous. Therefore I gather that friendship springs from a natural impulse rather than a wish for help: from an inclination of the heart, combined with a certain instinctive feeling of love, rather than from a deliberate calculation of the material advantage it was likely to confer. The strength of this feeling you may notice in certain animals.

MARIO DIGANGI

They show such love to their offspring for a certain period, and are so beloved by them, that they clearly have a share in this natural, instinctive affection. But of course it is more evident in the case of man: first, in the natural affection between children and their parents, an affection which only shocking wickedness can sunder: and next, when the passion of love has attained to a like strength - on our finding, that is, some one person with whose character and nature we are in full sympathy, because we think that we perceive in him what I may call the beacon-light of virtue. For nothing inspires love, nothing conciliates affection, like virtue.... Again, the believers in the “interest” theory appear to me to destroy the most attractive link in the chain of friendship. For it is not so much what one gets by a friend that gives one pleasure, as the warmth of his feeling; and we only care for a friend’s service if it has been prompted by affection. And so far from its being true that lack of means is a motive for seeking friendship, it is usually those who, being most richly endowed with wealth and means, and above all with virtue (which, after all, is a man’s best support), are least in need of another, that are most open-handed and beneficent. Indeed I am inclined to think that friends ought at times to be in want of something. For instance, what scope would my affections have had if Scipio had never wanted my advice or co-operation at home or abroad? It is not friendship, then, that follows material advantage, but material advantage friendship. • MARIO DiGANGI, Professor of English at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, is the author of The Homoerotics of Early Modern Drama (Cambridge, 1997) and Sexual Types: Embodiment, Agency, and Dramatic Character from Shakespeare to Shirley (Pennsylvania, 2011). He has edited Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer’s Night Dream for the Barnes & Noble Shakespeare and The Winter’s Tale for the Bedford Shakespeare: Text and Contexts series. In 2016 he served as President of the Shakespeare Association of America.

TIMON OF ATHENS

INTERVIEW

"WE ARE BORN TO DO BENEFITS"

SIMON GODWIN AND KATHRYN HUNTER IN CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD McCOY

Left: Director Simon Godwin. Right: Kathryn Hunter (Lady Timon) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

Shortly before the first preview of Timon of Athens, Richard McCoy of Theatre for a New Audience's Council of Scholars spoke with director Simon Godwin and performer Kathryn Hunter. They met in the lobby of Polonsky Shakespeare Center, during a short break from technical rehearsals.

SIMON GODWIN Well, I would describe a

RICHARD McCOY Timon’s line, “none / Can

The other quote that comes to mind is Apemantus saying to her in the second half, you live in these two extremes, and never in the middle place. True intimacy is allowing in as well as sending out. And this question of “generosity” (in quotes) replacing affection, I think, is roaming around the play a lot. Timon doesn’t have a partner, they’re not married, they have no love.

truly say he gives, if he receives” stood out for me in this reading of the play. I wonder what you make of that. Is this a sort of compulsive and insane generosity and altruism? Or is it a humane “paradise on earth,” as the scholar G. Wilson Knight said. He loved this play and took the title role of Timon in performance. 16

humane paradise as one that’s reciprocal. And the quote that you’re asking about is not. I think receiving is as important as giving, personally, and you could argue that Timon is doubtful, in her inability to truly reciprocate—to see but not to be seen, if you like.

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INTERVIEW: SIMON GODWIN AND KATHRYN HUNTER RICHARD McCOY And no family. SIMON GODWIN And no family. There’s a kind

of individual quality to it. And partly it also feels like an attempt to control. Shakespeare is always curious about those that seek to control. From Angelo, to Lear, to Antony and also Cleopatra, they’re always undone by the great tide of something that they can’t manage. In this case you try and meet somebody financially, using money to control feelings and affection. A contract. Only to discover that human beings never do what men think they’re going to. And that surprise is so enormous and so heartbreaking. It pins her to a more extreme level. At this point, Kathryn Hunter joined the conversation, emerging from backstage in a dressing gown not entirely without traces of stage blood. RICHARD McCOY Hi, Kathryn. KATHRYN HUNTER Hi, I’m sorry. I didn’t have

time to change. Julia Ogilvie (Jeweler) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

RICHARD MCCOY

SIMON GODWIN Wow! How glamourous.

(Laughter) Kathryn, welcome. RICHARD McCOY I’ll put the same question to

you as I just did to Simon. I cited the line “none / Can truly say he gives, if he receives.” And that line seems to me either the height of insanity… or, I cited G. Wilson Knight, talking about creating a humane paradise on earth. What’s your sense of Timon’s determination to give rather than receive? KATHRYN HUNTER I think our feeling is to take

Shakespeare at his word, rather than imagine that it’s some sort of twisted irony. That indeed it is a man, or a woman—a human being who believes this. Now, there are shades of, you know, “Is she looking to be loved?” and all that. But that is the problem with the proposition. Once upon a time, there was a human being who believed in giving, and almost sets herself up as an example. That’s what I feel when I play. There’s a lot of critique from Apemantus that only giving is… well, I play a role model of giving. Thereafter, there are many questions about whether this is a wise thing to do—if human beings are capable of selfless giving, true giving. And I think [these questions] still remain pertinent. But should we still not aspire to it? It’s like all the big questions, you know: there have always been wars, there always will be wars. Human beings are cruel and vicious and that’s how it is. We go, “Okay, but isn’t civilization about aspiring to something more?” So, I passionately believe that there is deep-seated and passionate belief in giving and kindness in Timon. SIMON GODWIN It’s wonderful. You speak very

much from the character and—well, you must. That’s brilliant. To go back to Wilson Knight, because I remember you showing me that essay that he’d written, Kathryn. KATHRYN HUNTER Oh, yes. SIMON GODWIN And that was a moment

in history when the play had been very much marginalized and seemed to be rather insubstantial, TIMON OF ATHENS

INTERVIEW: SIMON GODWIN AND KATHRYN HUNTER rather minor. And his essay was about presenting a view of the play as majestic, monumental, hugely symbolic and grandiose with its arguments. And that’s been very important in feeling access to those beliefs that Timon has. But from a distance, there’s a sort of question mark about reciprocal gestures. Seen, being seen, intimacy. I think the play explores what it is to give and why it is hard to receive. And what it triggers in you, Kathryn, as Timon. The shock you undergo, that provokes you to go to such an extreme place. RICHARD McCOY Timon the character seems

determined to undo reciprocity. And that remark is characteristic of doing that; she wants to just give. I mean, she is an extraordinarily generous person. SIMON GODWIN Actually, I’ve just realized,

I’ve said something untrue. RICHARD McCOY Yes? SIMON GODWIN You’ve just shown me

something. This story is, like you said, full of strange riddles. You think you know it and it just tells you something different. I just spent a lot of time defining reciprocity. One of the strange ironies of the play, though, is that it is Timon that says, I have given them money, they will give me money. So, yes, Timon has an issue emotionally reciprocating. But in terms of receiving a gift, she’s actually very much behind that. When Apemantus says, at the end of the party, don’t give me something, I’m not going to accept (what he describes as) a bribe… actually, Kathryn, you’re very cruel. As we learned, something is riled by that comment. KATHRYN HUNTER Yes. The accusation that I

want to be flattered. And there is some truth to that. On the other hand, we’ve indicated that I totally embrace the other argument. I’m so glad I’m not you, says Timon to Apemantus. And I’m glad I’m not you, he replies, that I wasn’t prodigal. And Timon says well, I am glad I am prodigal. “Oh, thank you so much.” “Thank you.” 18

RICHARD MCCOY

RICHARD McCOY I was struck by the Christ-like

character of Timon. But of course, she’s not a god. KATHRYN HUNTER I think Shakespeare and

Middleton are excitingly plain with this idea. You know, what would Christ do if he were offended? Turn the other cheek. And it’s as if Shakespeare is going, how about if you didn’t turn the other cheek? Just, you know, “whack!” SIMON GODWIN Yeah, that’s right. Christ loses

it, loses his temper. KATHRYN HUNTER Timon [has a reputation]—

oh, it’s that play where, you know, that guy curses us for hours. Do we really want to go and be cursed at? And I think we both feel that somewhere in the cursing, there’s a mission of cleansing. Let’s take stock. This is not good. Finish this version and start another. I’m sure until the end that Timon stays in touch with God. Never loses her connection. RICHARD McCOY That’s really interesting.

Cleansing as in catharsis? KATHRYN HUNTER Yeah. I mean, it’s quite a

dark perspective, like: let’s admit, this is no good. Should we start over? “What wouldst thou do with the world, Apemantus, if it lay in thy power?” “Give it the beasts, to be rid of the men.” SIMON GODWIN I think that betrayal is

another piece. It’s such a strong word, betrayal. If I were to ask you, “Have you ever been betrayed?” it does something in our feelings. I’ve always found it very moving—Christ, his betrayal. As a story, it’s almost the best bit, the most resonant. So, in Timon, this question of betrayal by those that you thought loved you starts to put it into a passion, a suffering. It’s such a kind of edgy, asymmetrical, bawdy, funny, city comedy. And yet at the very end, Timon does come up with a very serious, very beautiful line: “nothing brings me all things.” RICHARD McCOY Speaking of Christ again, I

think of the Corpus Christi College at Oxford, a name which means “body of Christ”; its emblem is a pelican. According to legend, the pelican does

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INTERVIEW: SIMON GODWIN AND KATHRYN HUNTER

RICHARD MCCOY

a Christ-like move and plunges her beak into her own breast to feed her young, and the motto is, “I perish so that you will flourish.” Timon does that to some extent.

know, turned about and set in Greece. There are lots of these sort of resonances in and around it, in terms of the scapegoat.

KATHRYN HUNTER Without giving too much

liver eaten, of course, by the vultures every day.

away, there is a sense in Simon’s configuration of a legacy to the world… you know what I mean? SIMON GODWIN Or certainly a feeling, maybe,

of the sacred. It’s a sort of Greek tragedy, you

KATHRYN HUNTER Or Prometheus, who has his SIMON GODWIN We travel to the theatre to

watch somebody suffer on our behalf. And inviting the audience to think about meaning—our legacy— is something we’re really trying to do in the end.

The Company in in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

TIMON OF ATHENS

INTERVIEW: SIMON GODWIN AND KATHRYN HUNTER RICHARD McCOY I’m wondering about which

of the multiple epitaphs you selected for Timon. And again, I don’t want to spoil things….

RICHARD McCOY Yes. I also have a question 1

SIMON GODWIN I think it’s…. KATHRYN HUNTER “Here lie I, Timon; who,

alive, all living men did hate: / Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here thy gait.” SIMON GODWIN But that’s something we

should touch on: we have been very liberal in our changes to the text. RICHARD McCOY Do you think that the

irregularities within the text give you more freedom as a director? SIMON GODWIN I do, yes. I think the fact that

it was co-authored—and it really feels that it was co-authored. You can almost feel it in the writing: Middleton wrote this bit and Shakespeare this. And I feel, therefore, that it’s a collaboration. There are bits that fit, and that don’t fit, and it would be a kind of misjudgment to take the play on its own terms.

about the two halves of the play: the one which is filled with love and generosity and the second half, which is filled with hatred and curses. KATHRYN HUNTER I wonder if we’ve come

to think of it as two different missions. Mission one: convert the world to love. And mission two: cleanse the world by whatever means available. Which includes cursing and enlisting other people to destroy and purge it. SIMON GODWIN Exactly, Kathryn. A lot of

our work, of course, in rehearsal is being practical people. How to make stuff active. How to play it, not as poetry that’s just kind of duh-duh-duh-duhduh. But really, part of [our work] is a real wish for change. And the more we discover, by trying to approach that authentically, the more the ironies of the play bounce back at us. Kathryn Hunter (Lady Timon) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

I think it’s a series of proposals and a series of ideas, vignettes, scenes that are wanting another draft. And people may say, that’s presumptuous. But of course, you’ll always have the last laugh because the play will outlive all of us. RICHARD McCOY Yes, it’s true. SIMON GODWIN That is safe. That’s going

to be there forever. But if along the way, some presumptuous person comes along and says, I’ve got an idea of how to bring the play’s spirit to new life, I’m very excited, as an audience, about seeing that person’s idea. And I’d rather it lived now than lived in a museum. 1 In the First Folio, there are 3 somewhat contradictory epitaphs in the play for Timon. The first, discovered by a soldier, says “Timon is dead, who hath outstretched his span: / Some beast read this; there does not live a man. / Dead, sure; and this his grave.” The second: "Here lies a wretched corpse, of wretched soul bereft: / Seek not my name: a plague consume you wicked caitiffs left!” And the third: “Here lie I, Timon; who, alive, all living men did hate: / Pass by and curse thy fill, but pass and stay not here thy gait.”

RICHARD MCCOY

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RICHARD MCCOY

The great scene when she talks to thieves, which is difficult but beautiful. When she’s saying: be a thief. Be a worse thief. Be a real thief, be violent, be aggressive, strangle people, go for it. And by the end of this long discourse they say, I don’t really feel like doing it anymore. She’s unwittingly made them good.

she’s deriding them. But even within that, there’s a biblical image. Christ was hung on a cross.

So all these campaigns for greater misanthropy are culminating in the poetry at the end, which weirdly take us to a greater appreciation of life. And that, I think is the catharsis at its most profound. I remember Peter Brook speaking when I was 16—I heard him talk and it was exactly this. Does nothing come of nothing? We have to go to a certain kind of tragic way of seeing, weirdly, for us to feel healed in those lines.

like Autolycus [in The Winter’s Tale], that are on the edge and lobbing thoughts in, and we never really know much about them. Where they come from, what they do for a job. Only thing we know, I guess, is that he’s a philosopher. And so one of the major questions we had is, who is he today? Arnie Burton, the actor, has made him into a kind of Gore-Vidal-meets-new-Greenwich-Village—a kind of edgy, queer commentator on the world that he’s not part of, who wants to wake the world up to their own hypocrisies.

KATHRYN HUNTER When she tells the senators

they can hang themselves “To stop affliction,”

SIMON GODWIN Yeah, on a tree. RICHARD McCOY What do you make of

Apemantus? SIMON GODWIN Well, it’s one of those parts

Daniel Pearce, Liam Craig and Dave Quay (Thieves) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

TIMON OF ATHENS

INTERVIEW: SIMON GODWIN AND KATHRYN HUNTER And clearly he does have a very real relationship with Timon. Because in the second half you have this very strange reconciliation between them which involves them calling each other insults. So, to answer your question, I’m not sure there is a way of summing him up, other than just sort of celebrating the contradictions that he inhabits. RICHARD McCOY Apemantus says of Timon

after her fall from affluence, “The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity of both ends.” Do you think Apemantus represents a kind of middle? SIMON GODWIN Well, he certainly represents

the truth, I think. Because at the beginning, with all these asides, he essentially says to the audience, I’m like you. I’m going to try and explain these people’s party to you. I’m the misanthrope in society. And when Timon’s gone away, he says: flatter these people. Do what they did to you. There is something fundamentally pragmatic about him. Which means that he’s not a quest figure. He’s a survivor. And Timon is a sacrifice. Maybe that’s the difference.

Which is Socrates, I believe. It’s the middle, but in the sense of an ideal balance, rather than oh, let’s just be medium, a happy medium. It’s finding the balance, because rage is sometimes appropriate. Anger is appropriate against a state or against the city where we live. But then comes a time where you have to mute your anger and bring mercy. And I think Shakespeare is always looking between those extremes, particularly for the quality of mercy. RICHARD McCOY And Alcibiades pulls no

punches. He excoriates the senators for refusing to concede any point. One more question? KATHRYN HUNTER I will. RICHARD McCOY At the end, when Timon pelts

them with stones, the poet says that he’s going to write a satire against “the softness of prosperity.” Arnie Burton (Apemantus) and Kathryn Hunter (Lady Timon) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

RICHARD McCOY Yes. SIMON GODWIN I’m so sorry, my family in

England is standing by for my phone call. I hope to have helped. KATHRYN HUNTER I’ll answer a bit more. SIMON GODWIN Wonderful. Good to meet

you, Richard. RICHARD McCOY Lovely to meet you, Simon.

Kathryn, I was going to ask about Alcibiades and what you make of him—or her, in this production—appearing at the end again, as a survivor. And someone who offers the olive and the sword. That also entails a kind of middle route. KATHRYN HUNTER Exactly, exactly. I mean, a

middle is dangerous work as it can sound just… mediocre. But she comes from, and I’m sure Shakespeare was familiar with it, with Plato’s encouragement of measure in all things. 22

RICHARD MCCOY

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INTERVIEW: SIMON GODWIN AND KATHRYN HUNTER [I take that to mean] the delusion, the fragility of prosperity. And certainly Timon’s life exemplifies that fragility. KATHRYN HUNTER Yes. RICHARD McCOY Do you think this play,

Timon of Athens, can be reduced to that? Or does it involve something more profound? KATHRYN HUNTER Timon does go to the

roots and into the earth, and finds the gold. The question is, what is gold? What is real gold? Prosperity? Opulence? The real search is for the inner gold, which is what? Which is love? Which is mercy? Which is compassion? I think Shakespeare’s brilliance is that it’s always a spiritual search. He’s a good craftsman and he knows that he has to have plots that go here and there and be lively and engaging. So, he’s not going to stay spiritual for two hours, you know what I mean? Elia Monte-Brown (Alcibiades) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

RICHARD MCCOY

But it’s always about, ultimately: what are we here for? And I trust the writing, where Timon at the beginning says, why are we born? “We are born to do benefits.” That’s it. That’s what we are born for. And Shakespeare is extraordinary in that respect: that we don’t articulate it every day, but there is that hunger surely in ourselves, going, what are we doing here? And he goes, you want to know why you’re here? To do benefits. But then, he tests that proposition. He tests it, so that as Timon is doing benefits, she was horrendously wrong. RICHARD McCOY Do you think she finds love at

the end? KATHRYN HUNTER Yes. I think yes, because in

our version she sees that the journey is difficult and that it ain’t easy to be the ideal human being. That it involves sacrifice. And I think that’s why, at the end, it’s kind of a borderline sacrifice, you know. She actually includes herself in castigating humanity. She doesn’t exclude herself. But there is love. I don’t think there can be hate without love. RICHARD McCOY Thank you so much. This

was—you’re every bit as magnanimous as Timon is. And I really appreciate your doing this less than 48 hours before showtime. KATHRYN HUNTER Oh, thank you. Thank you

so much. • This interview has been edited and condensed. RICHARD McCOY is a Distinguished Professor of English at Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of four books–Sir Philip Sidney: Rebellion in Arcadia (Rutgers, 1979), The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry (California, 1989), Alterations of State: Sacred Kingship in the English Reformation (Columbia, 2002), and Faith In Shakespeare (Oxford, 2014)–as well as many articles on Shakespeare’s plays. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council for Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and The Huntington Library. He has also served as a speaker and consultant for Shakespeare performances for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Canada’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Classic Stage Company, Target Margin, The Public Theater, and The Shakespeare Society as well as Theatre for a New Audience.

TIMON OF ATHENS

SONGS FROM THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE'S TIMON OF ATHENS “Pote Tha Kani Xasteria” is based a Cretan hymn that peasants sang in an uprising against the Ottoman occupation. Nikos Xylouris (1936-1980), composer and singer, was well known for covering “Pote Tha Kani Xasteria” in the 1970s and inspiring protestors rebelling against the Greek Military Junta which was in power 1967-74 after a coup d'état. Xylouris did not write “Pote Tha Kani Xasteria.” Lyrics and Music are traditional from a Cretan Rizitika song. Michael Bruce arranged it for Timon of Athens. It is performed by the Protestors. When will it get clear, when will it be February, Kristen Misthopoulos (Greek Singer) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

ACT I Song: “What is Your Substance? Whereof Are You Made?"

so that I may get my rifle, the beautiful cartridge belt, to descend to Omalos, to the street of Mousouros,

Performed by The Greek Singer. Lyrics are Sonnet 53 by William Shakespeare. Original composition by Michael Bruce.

to make mothers without sons, women without husbands,

What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend? Since every one hath, every one, one shade, And you but one, can every shadow lend. Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit Is poorly imitated after you; On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set, And you in Grecian tires are painted new: Speak of the spring, and foison of the year, The one doth shadow of your beauty show, The other as your bounty doth appear; And you in every blessed shape we know. In all external grace you have some part, But you like none, none you, for constant heart.

to make the babies cry without mothers,

ACT II Song: "Na Paro To Tufeki Mu Tin Emorfi Patrona" ["I Will Get My Rifle and My Lovely Cartridge Belt"] From the Greek song “Pote Tha Kani Xasteria” [“When Will The Skies Get Clear”] 24

to cry in the night for water, and at morning for milk, and after the morning for the sweet homeland. ACT II Reprise: ““What is Your Substance? Whereof Are You Made?" The first four lines of Sonnet 53 by William Shakespeare are sung in Greek and performed by The Greek Singer. Music composed by Michael Bruce. What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend? Since every one hath, every one, one shade, And you but one, can every shadow lend. •

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THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

SHIRINE BABB

(Lucia) New York: Macbeth (Lincoln Center), Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (OBC), Bedlam’s Crucible, Napoli, Brooklyn (Roundabout), Aliens with Extraordinary Skills (Women’s Project). Regional: School Girls, Antony & Cleopatra (2015 Theatre Critic Circle nom.), Measure & Dido (Kennedy Center), Widows (Arcola Theatre, London), Disgraced (2015 Critic Circle nom.). Television: “Iron Fist,” “I Love You... But I Lied,” “Blue Bloods,” “Madam Secretary.” East 15 Acting Conservatory (MA), USD/Old Globe PTAP (MFA). ARNIE BURTON

(Apemantus) Broadway: Machinal, Peter and the Starcatcher, The 39 Steps, A Free Man of Color, Amadeus. Off Broadway highlights: Lewiston/Clarkston (Drama Desk nomination), The Government Inspector (Callaway Award), The Mystery of Irma Vep (Drama League nom.), The Temperamentals (Drama Desk Award Ensemble), The New Yorkers, The Explorers Club, The Winter’s Tale, Lives of the Saints. TV and Film includes: "Murphy Brown," "The Good Fight," "Search Party," "Blacklist," "Jessica Jones," The Greatest Showman. HELEN CESPEDES

(Flaminia) Selected New York credits: The Cripple of Inishmaan (Broadway), Paul Swan is Dead and Gone (Civilians), The School For Scandal (Red Bull), A Picture of Autumn (The Mint). Regional: Williamstown, Old Globe, McCarter, Two River, Barrington Stage, Goodman, NYSF, Hartford Stage, Studio Theater, and Chautauqua. TV/Film: The Way I Remember It, "The Knick". Training: Juilliard. LIAM CRAIG

(Demetrius) was last seen at TFANA in Julius Caesar. Broadway: Boeing Boeing (u/s, appeared). Off-Broadway: Later Life (Keen Company), The Internationalist (Vineyard Theatre), Aunt Dan and Lemon (New Group), Two Noble Kinsmen (Public Theater). Regional: Henry V, Seder (Hartford Stage), Book of Will (Denver Center), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Weston Playhouse), School for Lies, The Tempest (Shakespeare Theatre Company); TV: “Madam Secretary”, “Mozart in the Jungle”. Film: The Royal Tenenbaums. MFA:NYU Left: Shirine Babb (Lucia), and John Rothman (Flavius). Right: Liam Craig (Demetrius) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photos by Gerry Goodstein.

TIMON OF ATHENS

THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

ZACHARY FINE

(Painter) Broadway: China Doll with Al Pacino. Off-Broadway: Acting Company, Mint, Pearl, Red Bull, Fiasco, Theatre for A New Audience. Regional: Guthrie, Folger, Playmakers, Original work; Walled In, Manifest Destiny (with Aitor Basauri and Lucas Rooney), So Please You (HVSF), The Sea Maids Music (HVSF) Bewilderness. 2015 Helen Hayes Award for Fiasco’s Two Gentlemen of Verona. Zack teaches clown and games at NYU, Fiasco Conservatory and more. YONATAN GEBEYEHU

(Poet) New York: I Thought I Would Die, But I Didn’t (New Georges/The Tank). Regional: Everybody (Shakespeare Theatre Company), Go. Please. Go. (Montana Rep), The Tempest (Shakespeare on the Manor), Noises Off, Romeo and Juliet (Chautauqua Theater Company), Christmas Carol (Portland Stage), Revolt. She said. Revolt Again., Strange Men, How to Use a Knife (UCSD/La Jolla Playhouse). TELEVISION: "Elementary," "Madame Secretary" (CBS). WEB: "86’d" (Bric Arts). BA in English Literature: Columbia University; MFA in Acting: UCSD. KATHRYN HUNTER

(Timon) TFANA: Why?, TheValley of Astonishment, Fragments (CICT/Bouffes du Nord), Yonatan Gebeyehu (Poet) in Theatre for a New Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Kafka’s Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed Monkey, The Emperor (Young Vic). Other theatre credits: by Simon Godwin. Photo by Gerry Goodstein. Antony & Cleopatra, King Lear (RSC); Prometheus Bound (Epidaurus); Richard III (Globe); and The Visit (National Theatre, Olivier Award for Best Actress). Film credits include: A Midsummer Night Dream, Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing, Tale of Tales, Black Earth Rising and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. ADAM LANGDON

(Lucilius) Christopher in the Bway tour of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Helen Hayes nomination). Regional: Kimberly Akimbo (Barrington), I Saw My Neighbor on the Train and I Didn’t Even Smile (BTG), Hapgood, Robin Hood (Williamstown). Film/TV: “Midnight, Texas”, “Masters of Doom,” “The Good Wife,” “Red Oaks,” “The Path,” “Difficult People,” “Peter Has to Go to the Doctor,” “Three Dates.” Co-wrote and co-starred in the web series “Moe and Jerryweather.” Training: Juilliard. KRISTEN MISTHOPOULOS

(Greek Singer) Off-Broadway debut! Regional: Shakespeare on the Sound; A Midsummer Night’s Dream. International: Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Film: Wild Nights With Emily. Training: The Globe Theatre (London), The Freeman Studio, BFA: Syracuse University. Instagram: @kristmis ELIA MONTE-BROWN

(Alcibiades) Elia has appeared in Blithe Spirit (The Guthrie), Top Girls (The Huntington), Between Riverside and Crazy (ACT Geary Theatre) and has also worked at The Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Humana Festival and many more. Film and TV credits include “FBI,” “The Deuce,” “The Resident,” “Shades of Blue,” “The Affair,” "Fort Tilden," “Search Party,” “The Following,” “Person of Interest,” “Madam Secretary,” “Elementary,” "Law and Order: SVU," and "Law and Order: Criminal Intent." Yale School of Drama. 26

T HEAT RE F O R A N E W A UD I E N C E 36 0 ° S E RIE S

THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

JULIA OGILVIE

(Jeweller/Hortensia/Timandra) Theater credits include: La MaMa: That Beautiful Laugh, Shakespeare Theatre Company: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Dorset Theatre Festival: The Mousetrap, Chautauqua Theatre Company: You Can't Take It With You, Macbeth. Original Solo Shows: Freckle & Burn, Everybody's Got Something. Comedy credits include: The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre: Maude Night, The Comedy Store, The Magnet Theater, The People's Improv Theater. Awards: Presidential Scholar in the Arts. Training: The Maggie Flanigan Studio, The Juilliard School. Instagram: @julia_ogilvie website: juliaogilvie.com DANIEL PEARCE

(Sempronius) Broadway: Machinal, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Off-Bway: Mother of the Maid, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Ping Pong, Henry V, Henry VI, Measure for Measure, Loves' Fire (Public), The Most Deserving (Women's Project), Falling (Minetta Lane), Passion Play (Epic), among others. Film/TV: The Last Thing Mary Saw (upcoming 2020), Murder of a President, Salt, Clowns, Godzilla, “Bull,” "Chapelle's Show," "Law & Order,” "SVU,” “CI”. MFA: NYU. 2017 Lunt-Fontanne Fellow. DAVE QUAY

(Lucullus) Off-Broadway: Socrates, The Low Road (Public Theater), The Heir Apparent (Classic Stage Company), Donogoo (Mint Theater). Regional: Dorset Theatre Festival, Shakespeare Theatre DC, New Jersey Symphony, Georgia Shakespeare, Alliance Theatre, Synchronicity Theatre, Chautauqua Theater Company, Florence Continuum. Film: Catcher was a Spy. TV: “Bull,” “Looming Tower,” “Gotham,” “House Of Cards,” “Blindspot,” “Unforgettable,” “Royal Pains,” “Forever,” “Drop Dead Diva.” Other: Big Apple Circus. MFA: NYU Grad Acting. Daniel Pearce (Sempronius) and John Rothman (Flavius) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

TIMON OF ATHENS

THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

JOHN ROTHMAN

(Flavius) TFANA: Pericles. Broadway: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Relatively Speaking, Prelude to a Kiss, Some Americans Abroad, Social Security. Off Broadway: CSC, New Group, Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard, Impossible H.L. Mencken, which he wrote. 100 plus movies, Stardust Memories, Ghostbusters, Devil Wears Prada, The Report and Bombshell. Television: Judge Kofax on "SVU," Series Regular on "One Mississippi," streaming on Amazon. Grad, Yale Drama, Actors Studio Lifetime member, EST, Actors Center. More: johnrothmanactor.com CHRIS BIESTERFELDT

(Guitarist) is a guitarist based in Brooklyn, New York. He has performed or recorded with Stevvi Alexander, Margo Rey, Raphael Saadiq, Warren Haynes, Donald Brown, James Williams, Hector Martignon, Mandy Gonzalez, for TV shows "Sesame Street," "Johnny And The Sprites," ESPN, etc. Chris has also played with the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, and Broadway shows including Rent, Hairspray, Xanadu, Next To Normal, Pippin, etc. Chris has two critically acclaimed albums of his own, Urban Mandolin and Phineas. For more info please visit http://chrisbiesterfeldt.com/ PHILIP COIRO

(Percussionist): Broadway Be More Chill, American Psycho. Off-Broadway Tick..Tick.. BOOM!, Silence The Musical. National Tours Flashdance, A Chorus Line, The Wedding Singer, The Wizard of Oz. Recorded the Original Cast Album for The Ballad of Little Jo composed by Grammy Award Winning songwriter Mike Reid (I Can’t Make You Love Me). Currently the music director/drummer for singersongwriter Troy Ramey. // Instagram @philcoiro

Yonatan Gebeyehu (Caphis) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

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THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

JOSHUA JOHNSON

(Clarinetist) is extremely excited to be working with this incredible company on this incredible piece! He has just finished a year and a half run as the solo flutist in the hit off-Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish, and has played numerous national/international Broadway tours, as well as 40+ shows in NYC and on multiple film/commercial recordings. Studies: Juilliard/ SFCM. Many thanks to Jeremy! SIMON GODWIN

(Director, Editor) is the Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company and an Associate Director at the National Theatre, where he has directed Hansard, Antony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night, The Beaux' Stratagem, Man and Superman and Strange Interlude. Simon is the former Associate Director of the Royal Court and Bristol Old Vic, where he directed numerous world premieres and classics. For the RSC, his Hamlet and The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Other work includes Richard II for Shakespeare’s Globe and Japanese production of Hamlet in Tokyo for Theatre Cocoon. JONATHAN GODDARD

(Choreographer) BROADWAY: Movement Direction: Cherry Orchard— Roundabout Theatre (dir.Simon Godwin). INTERNATIONAL: Movement Direction/Choreography: Antony and Cleopatra, Strange Interlude, Man and Superman, Beaux Stratagem, As You Like It, Sunset at the Villa Thalia (National Theatre), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Donmar), Timon of Athens, Two Gentlemen of Verona (Royal Shakespeare Company. AWARDS: Nominated for Times/South Bank Show Breakthrough Award (2007), Olivier Award (2008), Critics Circle National Dance Award (2011 and 2012, 2019). Jonathan has won the Critics Circle Award for best male dancer twice (2008 and 2014), and outstanding male performance (modern) in 2014. OTHER: Jonathan has worked for many major British dance companies including Rambert. Most recently dancing The Mother by Arthur Pita, which premiered in Edinburgh (2018), was shown in Moscow (2019) and at the Southbank Centre London (2019) Website: www.jonathangoddard.com SOUTRA GILMOUR

(Set and Costume Designer) Theatre: Betrayal (Broadway); Pinter at The Pinter, From Here To Eternity, The Commitments (West End); Twelfth Night, My Brilliant Friend, Shadow of a Boy (National Theatre); Strictly Ballroom (West Yorkshire Playhouse, Toronto, West End); Bull, When the World Was Green (Young Vic); Hecuba, Candide, The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes (RSC); Cyrano de Bergerac (Roundabout); Macbeth (Trafalgar Transformed); The Crucible, The Duchess of Malfi, Dr Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Old Vic), Reasons to be Pretty (Almeida). DONALD HOLDER

(Lighting Designer) TFANA: He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box (OBIE Award), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, many others. Broadway: fifty eight productions, two Tony awards (The Lion King and South Pacific) and thirteen Tony nominations. Recent projects include: Kiss Me Kate, Tootsie, My Fair Lady, Oslo, M Butterfly, Anastasia, She Loves Me, Fiddler On The Roof, The King and I, The Bridges Of Madison County, many others. Television: 'Smash' Seasons 1 and 2 (NBC-Dreamworks). Film: Oceans 8 (Warner Brothers Pictures). CHRISTOPHER SHUTT

(Sound Designer) Broadway: War Horse (Tony Award), Coram Boy, All My Sons, Not About Nightingales (Drama Desk Award), Moon for the Misbegotten, Privacy. Off-Broadway: Mnemonic (Drama Desk Award), Macbeth (Armory), Love & Information, Arturo Ui (with Al Pacino). London Theatre: Antony & Cleopatra, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Disappearing Number, The Elephant Vanishes, Street of Crocodiles, The Father, Twilight Zone, Oppenheimer, Glass Kill Bluebeard Imp, ear for eye, All About My Mother.

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THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

MICHAEL BRUCE

(Composer) Michael is a Scottish composer and lyricist. He was composer-inresidence at the Donmar Warehouse from 2012 to 2019. He has worked extensively at the Royal National Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company and in the West End. His work on Broadway includes Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Booth) and The Winslow Boy (Roundabout). Off-Broadway: Privacy (Public Theater). Publications include ‘Writing Music for the Stage: a Practical Guide for Theatremakers’. Helen Cespedes (Flaminia) and John Rothman (Flavius) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Timon of Athens, directed by Simon Godwin. Photo by Henry Grossman.

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THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

ANDREW WADE

(Voice Director) Broadway: Harry Potter and The Cursed Child Parts One and Two (U.S. Head of Voice and Dialect), A Christmas Carol (Voice and Dialect Director), King Lear with Glenda Jackson (Voice Coach), Matilda the Musical (Director of Voice) and national tour, A Bronx Tale the Musical. West End: Lord of the Rings. The Public Theater: Director of Voice and Speech (Delacorte, Astor Place and tours). Royal Shakespeare Company: Head of Voice (1990-2003). The Acting Company and Guthrie Theater: Julius Caesar. Theatre for a New Audience: Resident Director of Voice. New York Theatre Workshop: Othello with Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo. The Guthrie Theater: since 2002. Teaching: Juilliard (Adjunct Faculty Drama Division), Stella Adler Studio (Master Teacher Voice and Speech), NYU, BADA in Oxford, University of MN/Guthrie BFA and ‘A Guthrie Experience for Actors-in-Training program’. Film: Shakespeare in Love. Fellow: Rose Bruford College. Workshops and lectures: worldwide. LISA KOPITSKY

(Fight Director). Broadway: The Iceman Cometh; The Children, The Father. Selected Off-Broadway: Midsummer, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, Hamilton, Venice, Detroit ’67, Neighbors (The Public); Marys Seacole, Power Strip, Greater Clements (Lincoln Center); Bobbie Clearly (Roundabout). Selected Regional: Fingersmith (ART); Extremities (Berkshire Theater Festival); Dracula, WhaddaBloodclot!, The Valley of Fear (Williamstown). Creative Director of Vixens En Garde all-female fight troupe. Member: IDI. ANDREW DIAZ

(Dramaturg) is Professor of Theater at Hunter College, CUNY, and TFANA’s Resident Dramaturg. The author of five books on theater, he has worked for more than three decades as a theater scholar, critic, journalist, and dramaturg. He curates and hosts the theaterreview-panel series TheaterMatters at HERE Arts Center and has twice won The George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. He has also won the George Freedley Award for an outstanding theater book from the Theatre Library Association. He often writes about theater on his TheaterMatters blog (at www.jonathankalb.com). EMILY BURNS

(Editor) is currently Resident Director at the National Theatre of Great Britain. She has worked with Simon Godwin on Antony & Cleopatra and Hansard at the National Theatre, is the dramaturg on his upcoming production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington DC, and will be the associate director on his production of Romeo and Juliet at the National Theatre this summer. SHANE SCHNETZLER

(Production Stage Manager). TFANA: Why?, Soho Rep’s Fairview, Julius Caesar, The Emperor, Heart/ Box, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Tamburlaine, Cymbeline. OffBroadway: Noura, This Flat Earth, The Profane, Rancho Viejo, Familiar (Playwrights Horizons); Napoli, Brooklyn, Look Back in Anger (Roundabout); The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, The Comedy of Errors (NYSF); Detroit ’67 (Public); Night is a Room, The Liquid Plain, The Old Friends (Signature); Red Dog Howls (NYTW); Uncle Vanya (Soho Rep); The Scottsboro Boys (Vineyard). JARED OBERHOLTZER

(Assistant Stage Manager). Off-Broadway: 18 productions including The Michaels, Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3), Grounded, Giant, and Into The Woods (The Public); Signature Plays, The Dance and the Railroad (Signature); The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters (Playwrights Horizons). Regional: Hartford Stage, New York Stage and Film, A.R.T., Williamstown. Education: The University of Texas at Austin.

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THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

BLAKE ZIDELL & ASSOCIATES

(Press Representative) is a Brooklyn-based public relations firm representing artists, companies and institutions spanning a variety of disciplines. Clients include St. Ann’s Warehouse, Soho Rep, The Kitchen, Ars Nova, BRIC, P.S.122, Abrons Arts Center, Taylor Mac, LAByrinth Theater Company, StoryCorps, Irish Arts Center, Café Carlyle, Peak Performances, Batsheva Dance Company, The Playwrights Realm, Stephen Petronio Company, The Play Company, and FIAF’s Crossing the Line Festival. SHAKESPEARE THEATRE COMPANY

Led by Artistic Director Simon Godwin and Executive Director Chris Jennings, the Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) is synonymous with artistic excellence. STC strives to make classical theatre more accessible to audiences in and around the nation’s capital by expanding the definition of “classic” to include playwrights previously excluded from the canon while renewing its commitment to high-quality, exhilarating, inclusive theatre. A leader in arts education, STC has a dynamic range of initiatives that teach and excite learners of all ages. Located in downtown Washington, D.C., STC performs in two theatres and also hosts presentations from outstanding local performing arts groups and nationally renowned organizations. THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY

The Royal Shakespeare Company creates theatre at its best, made in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and shared around the world. We produce an inspirational artistic programme each year, setting Shakespeare in context, alongside the work of his contemporaries and today’s writers. Everyone at the RSC – from actors to armourers, musicians to technicians – plays a part in creating the world you see on stage. All our productions begin life at our Stratford workshops and theatres and we bring them to the widest possible audience through our touring, residencies, live broadcasts and online activity. So wherever you experience the RSC, you experience work made in Shakespeare’s home town. We have trained generations of the very best theatre makers and we continue to nurture the talent of the future. We encourage everyone to enjoy a lifelong relationship with Shakespeare and live theatre. We reach 530,000 children and young people annually through our education work, transforming their experiences in the classroom, in performance and online.

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THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

LEADERSHIP

JEFFREY HOROWITZ

(Founding Artistic Director) began his career in theatre as an actor and appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in regional theatre. In 1979, he founded Theatre for a New Audience. Horowitz has served on the panel of the New York State Council on the Arts, on the board of directors of Theatre Communications Group, the advisory board of the Shakespeare Society and artistic directorate of London’s Globe Theatre. Awards: 2003 John Houseman Award, The Acting Company; 2004 Gaudium Award, Breukelein Institute; 2014 Alfred Drake Award, Brooklyn College; 2019 Obie Lifetime Achievement Award. DOROTHY RYAN

(Managing Director) joined Theatre for a New Audience in 2003. She spent the previous ten years devoted to fundraising for the 92nd Street Y and the Brooklyn Museum. Ryan began her career in classical music artist management and has also served as company manager for Chautauqua Opera, managing director for the Opera Ensemble of New York, and general manager of Eugene Opera. She is a 2014 Brooklyn Women of Distinction honoree from Community Newspaper Group. MICHAEL PAGE (General Manager) joined TFANA in 2013, where he has managed over 20

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

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

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

S TAFF Founding Artistic Director

Jeffrey Horowitz Managing Director Dorothy Ryan General Manager Michael Page Director of Institutional Advancement James J. Lynes Finance Director Mary Sormeley Education Director Kathleen Dorman Director of Marketing & Communications Jennifer Lam Artistic Associate Peter Cook Associate Producer / Director of the Studio Nidia Medina Associate Director of Develeopment Barbara Toy Associate General Manager Kiana Carrington Theatre Manager Steven Gaultney Production Manager Zach Longstreet Box Office Manager Allison Byrum Facilities Manager Jordan Asinofsky Marketing Manager Torrence Browne Manager of Humanities / Assistant to Artistic & Managing Directors Tatianna Casas Quiñonez Institutional Support Manager Sara Billeaux Finance Associate Michelle Esposito Education Associate Philip Calabro Associate Facilities Manager Rashawn Caldwell Development Associates Richard Brighi, Allison Haglund New Deal Program Coordinator Tyler English-Beckwith House Managers Jonatan Amaya, Coral Cohen, Wednesday Sue Derrico General Management Intern Lillie Brown Press Representative Blake Zidell & Associates Resident Dramaturg Jonathan Kalb Resident Casting Director Jack Doulin

Theatre for a New Audience is an award-winning company recognized for artistic excellence. Our education programs introduce students to Shakespeare and other classics with the same artistic integrity that we apply to our productions. Through our unique and exciting methodology, students engage in hands-on learning that involves all aspects of literacy set in the context of theatre education. Our residencies are structured to address City and State Learning Standards both in English Language Arts and the Arts, the New York City DOE’s Curriculum Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Theater, and the 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.

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS

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

Emeritus Francine Ballan Dr. Charlotte K. Frank Jane Wells

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

MAJOR SUPPORTERS

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

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

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

($100,000 and up) New York City Department of Cultural Affairs The SHS Foundation The Shubert Foundation, Inc. The Thompson Family Foundation LEADING BENEFACTORS

($50,000 and up) Bloomberg Philanthropies Deloitte & Touche LLP The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust MAJOR BENEFACTORS

($20,000 and up) The Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation Sidney E. Frank Foundation Hearst The DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP Latham & Watkins LLP National Endowment for the Arts New York State Council on the Arts May and Samuel Rudin Foundation Inc. The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation Troy Chemical Corporation The Winston Foundation

SUSTAINING BENEFACTORS

($10,000 and up) The Howard Bayne Fund Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. Debevoise & Plimpton LLP The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Jean and Louis Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. Fiduciary Trust International Geen Family Foundation Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP Joseph and Sally Handleman Foundation Trust A Irving Harris Foundation Ingram Yuzek Gainen Carroll & Bertolotti, LLP The J.M. Kaplan Fund King & Spalding LLP Kirkland & Ellis LLP Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison Select Equity Group, Inc. Sidley Austin LLP Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP The White Cedar Fund PRODUCERS CIRCLE— THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S SOCIETY

($5,000 and up) Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP Axe-Houghton Foundation

Council Member Laurie A. Cumbo, NY City Council Discretionary Funding Dorsey & Whitney LLP Forest City Ratner Companies The Claire Friedlander Family Foundation Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP Litowitz Foundation, Inc. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP Richenthal Foundation The Dorothy Strelsin Foundation Michael Tuch Foundation, Inc. PRODUCERS CIRCLE—EXECUTIVE

($2,500 and up) The Norman D. and Judith H. Cohen Foundation DeWitt Stern Group, Inc. Marta Heflin Foundation Lucille Lortel Foundation Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund

PRODUCERS CIRCLE—ASSOCIATE

($1,000 and up) Actors’ Equity Association Bressler, Amery & Ross Kinder Morgan Foundation The Grace R. and Alan D. Marcus Foundation Richmond County Savings Foundation

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