Q: Are there any technical challenges for this particular play?

DP: We created our own unique challenges because we're adding video and projection. We're dealing with the physical realities of where the projectors are relative to the screens, and our screens also have to move up and down. Our scene moves from a low-lying world to a more elevated one. As we go from one world to the next, we're raising and lowering screens and projections to shift focus of scenes and to help with transitions. We start in England, where the images are lower to the ground, sepia-toned and monochromatic. Then we go to Narnia, and this world is elevated, CinemaScopic and colourful.

 

 

Q: What was the inspiration for your design?

DP: Tim Carroll [the director] and I are working from the script as our inspiration. For the construction of Aslan, the lion, I was influenced by War Horse. In a similar way, we wanted to use a large puppet in our production that becomes the embodiment of the character to help tell the story. So when Aslan first arrives, he will appear as this god-like, mythical creature. We've achieved this by designing a giant exoskeleton puppet that evokes majesty and presence. [Note: An exoskeleton is an external supportive covering that protects an animal's body. Examples include crabs, snails and grasshoppers.]

The young and hungry (and charming) couple at the heart of this production are played by Ian Lake and Krystin Pellerin. Mr. Lake returns to the Festival after a hiatus playing Guy in the hit musical Once in Toronto. In previous seasons at the Festival, he played Mortimer in Mary Stuart, Orestes in Elektra, Silvius in As You Like It, Arviragus in Cymbeline, Florizel in The Winter's Tale, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost. Ms Pellerin, who plays the Lady to his Macbeth, made her Stratford debut last season as Joyce in Possible Worlds. Prior to working at the Festival, she worked extensively with the Soulpepper theatre company in Toronto and was also kept very busy with film and TV work, including her role as Sgt. Leslie Bennett in the series Republic of Doyle.

Both actors are very much looking forward to the whole experience of this story and this production. "Ian and I went to school together!" reveals Ms Pellerin. "We were a year apart at the National Theatre School. We never got the chance to work together, but I was always a big fan of his. I'm really excited to be working together for the first time on such a wicked play."

Mr. Lake is equally effusive. "I'm excited that Antoni, our director, has chosen to cast Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth so young," he says. "It's different and it's sexy, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun to see what Krystin and I can create together. I'm really looking forward to working with her. Antoni is focusing heavily on the idea of the passion and ambition of youth, and I hope it's really going to inject this play with an energy that will thrill audiences."

Although the age of the Macbeths might be a slight departure for this production, the time and setting place us firmly in eleventh-century Scotland. It is a dark, primitive, strong and elemental world where the issues of love and fear come to the fore.

"It seems to me that the Macbeths' mutual passion is at the very heart of the tragedy," says Mr. Cimolino. "There is a lot of loyalty and love in their marriage, yet it is put to perverse purposes. Their love is real, but it becomes inextricably wound up with murder. Fear is mentioned a lot in the play, but love seems to be mentioned only in the context of murder. 'All is the fear, and nothing is the love,' says Lady Macduff, just before she and her children are murdered. It's like an inversion of the biblical words in the First Epistle of John (4:18): 'Perfect love casteth out fear.' Here, by contrast, fear casts out love and the Macbeths grow apart."

 The primitive, pagan setting also allows the earth-bound imagery and supernatural elements in the play to resonate and the witches to occupy a natural place within that setting. 

"[Macbeth] has some of the most amazing imagery ever written," says Mr. Lake. "The characters exist in a world full of darkness and superstition. Fear and love course throughout, and the images of blood and night and darkness and the spirits of evil are so strong in these characters' imaginations. Storms and fog and ghosts, raves and scorpions and snakes, and screams and moans. It's a kind of language that Shakespeare doesn't use in any of his other plays."

The play had broad appeal in Shakespeare's day, and Ms Keiley certainly intends that to be the case today. She is setting it circa 1985 in her native Newfoundland, where, in the contrast between that province's traditional rural culture and the oil-wealthy big-city life of its capital, St. John's, she sees a modern-day parallel to the two worlds of the play: Duke Frederick's court and the Forest of Arden.

"There had always been a tension between the urban and rural in Newfoundland," she says, "and in the 1980s, the tide began to change in the desired identity of the island. In a very short time, traditional Newfoundland customs, dances, music, humour were embraced instead of hidden, and it became a place that by the 2000s people wanted to come in droves to, not leave in droves from."

As You Like It is Shakespeare's love letter to the pastoral," she says. "It starts in the court, which is all about backstabbing and the rat race. But when they go out to the country, even though they have to think about survival, everyone relaxes: they sing songs and write poetry." It is a joyous, accessible play about love, family, foolishness and the power of transformation.

It is also full of music, which in this production runs the gamut from '80s-style arena rock at court to traditional Celtic music in the forest. The music will be composed by none other than Bob Hallet, a member of one of Newfoundland's most famous bands, Great Big Sea. 

If you've ever wanted to be a part of an East Coast "kitchen party," you will get your chance in this production! Immediately prior to the performances, a select number of audience members will be invited to learn a traditional Newfoundland set dance (much like a square dance) and then to perform it on stage with the cast. "At one point in the play," explains Ms Keiley, "[the character] Jaques utters an incantation to draw people into a circle. This production will be about that: drawing people into a circle and saying, let's play together."

Those who have seen Ms Keiley's previous Festival productions, The Diary of Anne Frank and Alice Through the Looking-Glass, won't be surprised to learn that she plans to engage the audience in this light-hearted comedy in unconventional ways.

"I want the audience to feel like we're creating this show together. I want them to be delighted and to have so much fun and so much love for life - and for each other." She elaborates: "Designer Bretta Gerecke and I have concocted a world where the audience engages not just as the observer, but as those with whom we work to make the play."

Upon entering the theatre, audience members will be given a bag (which they get to keep!) that contains such things as tree branches, paper fans, hats and flowers, letters, clothespins, light-up stars, etc. From these simple items, audiences on the orchestra level, wearing their green paper crowns, will help create an image of a meadow or the forest floor for example. Light-up stars in the balcony will illuminate the night sky. Gigantic mirrors on the stage will enable the audience to see the picture they are creating. Audience members are encouraged to wear white or light-coloured clothing to enable the theatre lighting to incorporate them into the landscape of the play. Whilst in the forest of Arden, the young hero of the play, Orlando, writes love poetry to the object of his affection, Rosalind, which he hangs on branches of trees throughout the forest. Young people are being requested to submit these poems, which will be used as props in the play.

 

"It's simply a terrific story," says Dr. Dean. "The 'reality effects' evident in the film were very impressive and succeeded in immersing you in the Elizabethan past, and I know the experienced and creative production team at Stratford will bring this re-imagining of the past to life on stage. Looking over the cast list, I really do believe this production might outdo the film.

"And, of course, this is a play that has something for everyone. It's serious and hilarious, it's a story with danger and edginess, but it's also a love story."

Mr. Witzel agrees that the look of the film was a significant part of its appeal. "Joseph Fiennes wore pumpkin pants well and made them actually look not ridiculous," he says. "I think in 1998 that had a lot to do with people's interest in Shakespeare." He also concurs that the type of story is key, adding that "we use narrative and fiction to refine our empathetic capacity."

As for the stage version, he praises Declan Donnellan, who directed the play in London and will do so again in Stratford. "Donnellan is an extremely skilful, humane director," he says. "He gets killer performances from his actors, and is really thoughtful about how to tell a story. And he has a great visual sensibility."

Directing a play that began as a film can be challenging for a myriad of reasons, says Mr. Witzel. For one thing, a play requires different styles of staging and performance from a movie, where close-ups can capture the smallest and most intimate moments. Also: "People probably know how it ends, so you have to work with the story differently - kind of like directing a Shakespeare play. We know Hamlet ends with a minor holocaust, so how do you create dread and hope and fear and empathy so that it's still affecting and effective?"

Dr. Dean adds: "The [stage] director is faced with a degree of expectation and anticipation, not only from those who have experienced the film but also from those who have heard about it. Audiences then come with knowledge that the production might sustain or challenge. The real challenge is to make something new out of something old - and by what my U.K. friends have told me, Declan Donnellan achieved this in London."

Both men expect that Shakespeare in Love will demystify William Shakespeare for students - and not only because, in Mr. Witzel's words, it offers "Shakespeare without the dense verse." Here is a very human and fallible Shakespeare who has to hone his skills through practice, like anyone else; crowd-pleasing plays or sonnets don't just spring immediately from his quill.

"One of the great things about this play," says Dr. Dean, "is that it debunks the 'great genius' myth of Shakespeare without being at all disrespectful. It tells the story of playwriting and playmaking in his own world and immerses us in the frantic life of Bankside and the hustle-and-bustle commercial aspect of the Elizabethan theatre.

"And it has wonderful characters from that world, such as the entrepreneurial Philip Henslowe, whose accounts are such an important source for early theatre historians, or the boy John Webster, who later wrote dark and complex revenge tragedies. It also raises possibilities about the writing of other plays and encourages us to think not only about the person who wrote them but also the ups and downs of everyday life of his time. It's a great primer for understanding that world."

Mr. Witzel hopes Shakespeare in Love will help students see theatre not as some rarefied intellectual pursuit but as a creative profession that inspires passion - one in which people often struggle to make a living from their talent. "Declan Donnellan has talked about how, for him, this piece is about the moment when artists fall in love with the form of theatre - when they realize they can't do anything else."

With all of this on his plate, it's no wonder Graham Abbey has taken well over a decade to complete Breath of Kings - a project made all the more daunting by the fact that the existing material he was adapting is by William Shakespeare.

Distilled from four of Shakespeare's histories - Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, and Henry V - Breath of Kings comprises two plays, subtitled Rebellion and Redemption. Each stands alone as a self-contained drama, but together they tell a continuous story. Those who choose to see both parts, says Mr. Abbey, will be witness to a "sweeping journey" with "a unified vision all the way through."

It was an ambitious project to undertake, particularly since Mr. Abbey is better known to Festival audiences as a leading actor than as a dramaturge. "I hadn't done anything like this before," he says. "But the idea always attracted me. I went to university and studied politics, but my love was always writing and language."

That particular cycle of four plays - which tell a gripping tale of leadership, the right to reign, how one gains or loses power and how that shapes a kingdom - have been a passion of his for years. And he knows them inside out: at a pivotal point in his Stratford career, he happened to be playing Prince Hal (later Henry V) during the fateful days surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City.

"It was just hours after the planes had hit the towers," he recalls. "That night, you could hear a pin drop in the theatre as we told this story of war, the legitimacy of kingship and what leads a society into war. I don't think I've ever been in a theatre where we were holding a better mirror up to nature."

The genesis of Breath of Kings can be traced back to that moment, though of course Mr. Abbey's perspective on the story of Prince Hal's journey from apparent reprobate to national hero has evolved over the course of the fifteen years and five military conflicts that have elapsed since the events of 9/11.

"These plays are so epic in nature," he says: "you get this sweeping journey through history. What is important to the play now becomes the perspective of what story are you telling, what characters belong to the tale and are essential to push plot forward and, most importantly, what is going to resonate with us in 2016."

He has not rewritten Shakespeare's texts; rather, he has edited them down (and done some minor rearranging of scenes) to focus on the cycle's overall narrative arc. "My goal was to try and keep the main spine of the journey intact and cut what I felt were things we could cut in order to expedite that journey," he explains. At the same time, he has been careful not to jettison too much. He uses a musical metaphor to describe his dramaturgical process.
 

"I often thought of the piece like a symphony. I didn't want all of the cuts to just be the 'minor notes,' as I call them, and just leaving the major chords. It is in fact these minor notes that often become the most profound, life-changing moments in Shakespeare's plays. There is such a delicate balance in Shakespeare's histories between the macro world of kings and armies and the micro world of gardens and pubs. I tried to maintain this balance in my cuts."

In 2016, the Stratford Festival presents The Hypochondriac, a hilarious adaptation of Molière's timeless comedy by British playwright Richard Bean. The production will feature heightened physical comedy under the guidance of Canadian master commedia dell'arte teacher Perry Schneiderman, and a stellar cast led by Stephen Ouimette (in the title role), Brigit Wilson, Ben Carlson and Trish Lindström.

"I'm looking forward to the comedic genius of Mr. Ouimette again and his generosity as a scene partner," says Brigit Wilson, who plays Argan's maid, Toinette. "His leadership while exploring a script and, more importantly, as a senior company member is what makes [the Festival] the extraordinary place it is. I'm a better actor for being in his company."

For his part, Mr. Ouimette looks forward to exploring Molière's comedy - and his role as Argan - from the unaccustomed perspective of this adaptation, which is written in a lively modern idiom.

"When I first read this version of the play, I literally laughed out loud at least three times per page," he says. "So I am looking forward to finding out if we can get through rehearsals without pulling some serious stomach muscles! The characters are real and outrageous - always a great combo!"