The Winter’s Tale

by William Shakespeare directed by Sammy Zeisel

Creative Team

Choreographers

Kemar Jewel

KIM KIM

Music Director, Composer, and Sound Designer

Liam Bellman-Sharpe

Scenic Designer

Charles T. Meier

Costume Designer

Kyle J. Artone

Lighting Designer

Ankit Pandey

Projection Designer

Sam Skynner

Production Dramaturg

Rebecca Flemister

Fight and Intimacy Consultant

Kelsey Rainwater

Stage Manager

Aura Michelle

Cast

Polixenes/Officer

Patrick Falcon

Camillo/Officer

Max Monnig

Paulina/Autolycus

Olivia Cygan

Mamillius/Perdita

Tyler Cruz

Hermione/Shepherd

Shimali De Silva

Leontes/Shepherd’s Son

Mihir Kumar

Antigonus/Florizel

Giovanna Drummond

The Winter’s Tale is performed without an intermission.

Content Guidance

TBD

This production is supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.

Artistic:

Assistant Costume Designer

KT Farmer

Assistant Sound Designer and Engineer

Minjae Kim

Assistant Stage Manager

Hope Ding

Production:

Associate Safety Advisor

Aholibama Castañeda González

Associate Production Manager

Cian Jaspar Freeman

Technical Supervisor

Jason Dixon

Production Electrician

Matteo Lanzarotta

Projection Engineer

John Simone

Projection Programmer

Christian Killada

Run Crew

Steph Burke, Micah Ohno, Chinna Palmer, Kamal Sehrawy, Miguel Urbino

Administration

Associate Managing Director

Matthew Sonnenfeld

Assistant Managing Director

Natalie King

Management Assistants

Mikayla Stanley, Roman Sanchez

House Manager

Spencer Knoll

Production Photographer

Maza Rey

Yale University acknowledges that Indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring and continuing relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.

The Shakespeare Repertory Projects are designed to be learning experiences that complement classroom work, providing a medium for students at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale to combine their individual talents and energies toward the staging of collaboratively created works. Your attendance meaningfully completes this process.

THE BENJAMIN MORDECAI III PRODUCTION

FUND, established by a graduate of the School, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982–1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Program from 1993 until his death in 2005.

All patrons must wear masks at all times while inside the theater except when eating or drinking. Our staff, backstage crew, and artists will also be masked at all times.

The taking of photographs or the use of recording devices of any kind in the theater without the written permission of the management is prohibited.

David Geffen School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year.

We have been living through a time of collective uncertainty. The last few years have contained political upheaval, division, fear and unreconcilable loss. A harsh winter that seems as though it will never end. And though the world has recently gone through a shared trauma, it seems we are more isolated than ever. Fear creates the impulse to isolate, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. When the world around us becomes threatening, the impulse can be to protect ourselves at all costs—even at the expense of others—to hold onto any illusion of control and crash inwards instead of reaching out.

In The Winter’s Tale Leontes’ fear stems from uncertainties that exist within all of us: do the people I love really love me? Are they faithful? Can I trust them? It is impossible to have indisputable answers to these questions, and so, it is what we choose to believe about what we cannot know that frames our reality. Leontes conjures death and destruction, breaking away from everyone he trusts because the tale he’s telling himself can only have one certain conclusion. The narrative he can control is a tragedy of his own making.

Rejecting certainty leaves space for possibility. In Hope in the Dark Rebecca Solnit writes, “Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act.” It is the presence of hope in the midst of the unknown that interrupts the conventions of tragedy in The Winter’s Tale. Even when all appears lost, it is the actions of Hermione, Paulina and Antigonus that safeguard the last seed of hope, baby Perdita, through a winter without assurance of spring. Even as these characters fear for themselves, their constancy in fighting for the wellbeing of others allows for the generic break that moves us from the constrains of Sicilia to the shores of Bohemia.

In Bohemia hope is cultivated by casting off control and convention. It is through the embrace of the unpredictable that limitations are transcended. Here those separated by age and position can come together in community and reimagine the future through play. Here unknowingly Perdita breaks the generational curse of her father’s doubt by growing more steadfast in love in the face of fear instead of hiding deeper inside herself.

Collective dismantling of expectations in this tale allows reconciliation to occur. It is only when we can embrace an ending without needing the catharsis of a tragedy or the ease of a comedy that we are able to grapple with uncertainty. In the wake of seemingly irredeemable harm, we are given space to imagine that forgiveness is possible in spite of all that has been lost, that the past does not have to condemn anyone to isolation. That a tyrant can be brought to his knees, not by the sword, but by unfathomable grace. That collective faith can produce real miracles, and hope can change the trajectory of a future that once seemed inevitable.

—Rebecca Flemister, Production Dramaturg