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).