Time

Time is a key element in The Winter’s Tale. Had Leontes taken the time to ask Hermione and Polixenes if there was any sort of physical relationship between them, he could have saved his friendship and his wife’s life. Cleomenes and Dion do not arrive back from the oracle in enough time to quell the majority of Leontes’ rage. Paulina spends a large amount of her life waiting for confirmation of her husband’s life or death. Most importantly, over a decade passes between acts 3 and 4.

The actual character of Time is present, however, in only one scene, to usher us through the 16 years.

I went through a series of problem-solving sessions for Time. I initially was going to have Mamillius appear as a ghost, alone in one pool of light; I decided that would diminish the effect that Hermione’s ghost has in Antigonus’ dream. Then I was going to have Paulina deliver the speech, as the only one who still has hope the oracle will come true; but the lines are too personal—no one would believe Paulina as Time incarnate. I finally decided that the entire cast (except for the three dead people) would be Time, saying the whole speech as a chorus while hanging Perdita’s artwork. This way, every character is seen to be a part of the collective aging.

Only Shepherd, Clown, Perdita, and Florizel will interact with each other, and they will do all of the labor. Paulina, Archidamus, Camillo, Polixenes, and Autolycus will be arranged around the room speaking directly to audience members, reading, or playing card games. Leontes will be solitary and stationary in the middle of the space, signifying that the world around him has gone on around his time spent repenting.

Age

In Elizabethan times, it was quite normal to have a 16 year old playing a 16 year old. Today, I think that when professional productions are so focused on having an advanced actor in every role, casting an adult as a teenager can cause the show to suffer. Judi Dench played Perdita in 1969…she was 35 years old! I am sure that she did a fine job at the acting, but there is just a quality of youth and innocence that disappears after one has had a few years to experiment with success, substances, and sex. I can understand not wanting to pull a couple of 11th graders into a cast where the next youngest person may be in their late 20s, but one has to think about the nature of the relationships as written.

Have you ever seen a kid start their first high school romance? My little sister had her first “real” boyfriend at the end of 10th grade, and it was all holding hands, hugging, telling each other how beautiful they were, doing homework together—it was one of the cutest, sappiest things ever, full of doe-eyes and big, genuine smiles. THAT is how Perdita and Florizel should behave toward each other. At 24, I know that I have had too many relationships to be able to properly communicate those strong, first-love feelings that they have toward each other.

When I was Assistant Director for Romeo & Juliet 2 summers ago, our Romeo and Benvolio were 17 and our Juliet was not yet 16. We had the option of casting a 20 year old Juliet, who was technically the better actress, but there was just something behind her eyes that was sullied and jaded. It was true that the production suffered from their lack of experience, but it was so magical to watch them bond with each other and come of age through their roles.

One of the most vile things that I ever experienced in regard to Shakespeare was when my 10th grade English teacher made us watch an ancient black and white video of Julius Caesar and listen to it on an old scratched record because “high schoolers don’t know how to read Shakespeare.” While I knew that I was ahead of the curve (having read Macbeth when I was 11), I also knew that if he had just let us try, we would have figured it out. It wouldn’t have been beautiful, but we would have owned our experience.

I am holding invited auditions for the roles of Perdita, Mamillius, and Florizel. The only people I invited are teenagers who I have worked with before. As a director, it is my responsibility to do better than was done for me and nurture the young actors who enjoy Shakespeare. I received a lovely note from an invitee’s mother: “Thanks for believing in Danny, and for giving him chances to improve his skills!” All of the bad reviews in the world could not quench the knowledge that I am trying to be faithful to the text and trying to improve my theatre community.

Living Art

It is unclear in the text of the play if Paulina’s statue is stone that becomes a living being (as Pygmalion’s does in Ovid’s Metamorphoses) or if Hermione never actually died and is just holding really really still. Paulina says that she is about to perform some magic to bring Hermione to life, but she uses no fantastical terms of conjuring.

‘Tis time, descend: be stone no more: approach:

Strike all that look upon with marvel. Come,

I’ll fill your grave up. Stir. Nay, come away.

Bequeath to death your numbness…(5.3.121-5)

These lines sound more like a woman trying to comfort her sister at the loss of a partner. “Come on, you can move on with your life now. Look how happy it will make everyone around you if you get out of bed and come talk to us.”

It is my belief that the trick Friar used for Hero in Much Ado About Nothing is the same one Paulina used for Hermione. A man as filled with rage as Leontes’ would not have actually checked to make sure his wife was dead, and Paulina knew as long as Hermione stayed down, she was free. It makes more sense to have Paulina stealing away to a removed hut several times a week if Hermione is living. Otherwise, Paulina could have commissioned her statue in a place that wasn’t as inconvenient to get to.

Autolycus Joins the Party

I knew that I did not want to portray Autolycus as a dirty, trinket-pandering pick pocket or as an abrasive fop in a world of creatives. I needed to find a way to mesh him seamlessly into the art gallery scene, and I knew that Autolycus would have no reason to be present at Perdita’s art gallery opening if he wasn’t serving some purpose. He is the only character in the show who sings songs, so I thought of what a modern version of a troubadour would be.

Autolycus is the DJ for the festivities. When he first enters the stage he will have a big pair of headphones on, singing the words to his first song. The audience will be hearing the music of the song, as if they were inside Autolycus’ ears. His subsequent songs will be prerecorded as the ambient music of the special event.

He has fun little speeches when he is describing the trinkets he has and songs he knows to Clown, Mopsa, and Dorcas. Now, I could have chosen to have them all looking through his trendy messenger bag and flipping through his music library, but that was not exciting enough for me. His wares and songs are drugs. He gets his victims so high and involved in trance music that they wouldn’t know they were being robbed.

Costumes/Colors in Sicilia

The colors of the costumes that each character will wear will communicate their personalities and how they relate to others in the play. I will be using Hinduism’s seven major chakras for the Sicilian experiment in color theory.

The costumes for all of the Sicilians will show them to be members of a financially elite, educated class. High-end business attire is mandatory in Leontes’ court/Paulina’s Gallery.

Leontes will wear a charcoal or black 3-button suit with a dark yellow/mustard vest and tie. The color yellow represents the Manipura chakra, which governs the adrenal glands and “issues of personal power, fear, anxiety, opinion-formation, introversion, and transition from simple or base emotions to complex” (Mercier 167).

Hermione will wear a white silk blouse with a violet A-line skirt. The color violet links with the Sahasrara chakra, which deals with issues such as death of the body, and linking meditation to physical movement. The white chakra, Ajna [also indigo] corresponds on the human body to the pineal gland, which regulates sleep and waking up. It controls a person at their “intuitive level” (Mercier 267).

Paulina will be dressed in a green pencil skirt, black jacket, and pink scarf. Anahata, the green or pink chakra, is located at the thymus, which is responsible for warding off disease. “Emotionally it governs unconditional love…mentally it governs passion, and spiritually it governs devotion” (Mercier 199).

Antigonus and Camillo will also be wearing business suits.

• Antigonus’ will be grey with light blue accessories to correspond with Vishuddha—the chakra that governs fluent speech and thought, and security. It is Antigonus’ communication with Leontes’ that convinces him to not kill the baby Perdita.
• Camillo’s suit will be navy blue, which is another representative color of Ajna. The image for Ajna is a lotus with two petals. Throughout the course of the play, Camillo serves two kings.

Mamillius’ costume will be khaki pants and a red polo shirt. While Muladhara (the red chakra) is commonly associated with sexuality and survival, it is also related to basic human potentiality. Mamillius’ life ended before he was able to achieve his potential.

Art Gallery Settings

Once I decided to direct this play, I immediately realized that I needed to find a way to modernize the setting, incorporate Hermione’s statue into the landscape of Sicilia, and allow Perdita all of her flora without actually having tons of plants around. I knew that I did not want to go so far as to have the Sicilians in their power suits and the Bohemians in overalls to communicate the two different settings. Upon reading Bate’s Introduction in the RSC script, one line stood out to me: “When she [Paulina] finally softens and lets him into her art gallery, surely we, too, need to let go of our reason and moral judgment” (Bate xviii). The script only says that Paulina steals away to a removed hut; this was a ground-breaking concept for me. From there, all of the pieces started to fall into place.

Since we really only see Sicilia from the court and Bohemia from the farm, I decided to do away with the suggested scene settings such as “a room in Leontes’ court”, “outside Leontes’ court”, “the coast of Bohemia”, and “the countryside” because I knew that there was no way to communicate so many different settings in one space, nor did I want to fuss around with making and moving around a bunch of set pieces. I decided to have the two kingdoms be art galleries.

In order to justify the statue of Hermione, Sicilia will be a sculpture gallery, with Paulina as curator. The Bohemian “sheep-shearing festival” will be the opening reception for Perdita’s collection of floral paintings.

I recalled a visit to the Met last spring (a lovely side trip while in NY to see the Patrick Stewart Macbeth); the human body art (sculpture and armor) felt awe-inspiring, austere, and got my blood pumping. Most of the surviving art of this genre came from civilizations that were more competitive, war-like, and fearsome—like Leontes. The paintings of sweeping landscapes, still-lifes, and the household finery with intricate floral patterns made me feel more peaceful and as if I needed to use more of my intellect to understand what was at work in that art—like Polixenes.

Basic Vision

When attempting to mount a production of a show that has been done countless times, a director strives to come up with original, ground-breaking concepts for her show. I am not claiming that the decisions I am making have never been made before, just that these are my ideas and justification for Shakespeare on the Grand’s January performance of The Winter’s Tale.

From the start, I knew that I wanted the setting of the play to be ambiguously contemporary. The LCP Underground space will be transformed into 2 different art galleries, to represent the 2 different countries that the play takes place in. The royalty are members of an enlightened, educated, financially powerful class, with the common folk as members of the growing “creative class”. How the Sicilians and the Bohemians are separately envisioned will be explained in subsequent posts.

The script for this production has been heavily edited (from 109 pages to 69). While I appreciated reading and acting Shakespeare’s works in their unabridged forms, I am aware that most audiences today A) only understand 40-60% of what is being spoken, B) have limited attention spans, especially for things that are [effectively] not in their native tongues, and C) appreciate a plot that is as easy-to-follow as possible, without too many side trips that do not forward the action of the play.

I did my initial edits in a paperback edition of the Bate and Rasmussen RSC script, purchased at a local bookstore. The RSC publications use the First Folio of 1623 as the only definitive version of the plays. I copied and pasted a script from this website to transfer my edits into a digital format. My edited script may be found here (please do not use without my permission).