2006
Mainstage Behind the Scenes
We're Excited to Introduce the Casts for the Summer
Productions:
KING
LEAR |
Lear
Goneril
Regan
Cordelia
Kent
Gloucester
Edgar
Edmund
Fool
Cornwall
Albany
Oswald
King of France
Duke of Burgundy
Perillus |
Barry Kraft*
Mary Knoll*
Cat Thompson*
LeAnne Rumbel
George Maguire*
Jack Powell*
Michael Wiles*
Darren Bridgett*
Matt Henerson*
John Basiulis
Dennis O'Brien
Matthew Purdon
Elias Escobedo
Michael Abts
Ron Severdia |
*
Member of Actor's Equity Association |
|
ALICE
IN WONDERLAND |
Alice
Charles Dodgson
White Rabbit
Mad Hatter
Caterpiller
Duchess
Queen of Hearts
Cheshire Cat
Dormouse
Mock Turtle |
Hannah Kornfeld
Michael Wiles*
Jack Powell*
Darren Bridgett*
George Maguire*
Matt Henerson*
Mary Knoll*
Cat Thompson*
Emily McGowan
John Basiulis |
*
Member of Actor's Equity Association |
|
COMEDY
OF ERRORS |
Antipholus
Dromio
Adriana
Luciana
Solinus
Egeon
Angelo
1st Merchant
2nd Merchant
Dr. Pinch
Officer
Courtesan
Emilia
Nell |
Andrew Fonda Jackson*
Brandon Roberts
Mary Knoll*
LeAnne Rumbel
Stephen Dietz
Jack Powell*
Jonathan Gonzalez*
John Basiulis
Christopher Hammond
Robert Currier
Bruce Viera
Suraya Keating
Maureen O'Donoghue
Emily O'Connor |
*
Member of Actor's Equity Association |
 Spotlight
on Barry Kraft
Barry is a unique treasure of the American Shakespeare
theatre. He has acted in all 38 of Shakespeare’s
plays (more than 100 roles in 82 full productions)
including numerous roles in 20 seasons with the
Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has also performed
at many of the nation’s other leading theatres.
At OSF, he has been dramaturg for 37 Shakespeare
productions as well as several non-Shakespeare plays.
He has taught at the American Conservatory Theater
and the Denver National Theater Conservatory among
other places. Barry’s passions include chess, go,
astronomy and literature. He has published After-Dinner
Shakespeare, Thy Father is a Gorbellied Codpiece,
and “On the Theatrical Worth of Discarded Words”
in On-Stage Studies. Barry’s unique official title
at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, from which he
retires after the 2005 season, is “Shakespeare Dramaturg
and Gadfly.”
Barry acted with the original Marin Shakespeare
Festival in 1968 playing Macduff in Macbeth and Octavius Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra and is thrilled to return to the Forest Meadows
stage. He has worked on seven production of King Lear, alternating the title role at the
American Conservatory Theater in 1987 with Peter
Donat. This time around he will be working from
the ground up, helping to shape the script, plan
the production, and creating what is sure to be
a memorable performance in Marin Shakespeare Company's
first assay at Shakespeare's grand tragedy. Be sure
to catch one of Barry's vibrant lectures to be scheduled
during the summer; these are a can't-miss treat!
- Spotlight
on Rob Clare
Rob Clare’s work as an actor and/or director included seasons at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester, as a Staff Director at the National Theatre, and as the Associate Director of Compass Theatre, before he returned to Oxford University in the 1990s to complete a doctorate focused on the practical interpretation of Shakespeare’s verse and prose.
Since graduating from Oxford as a Shakespeare specialist, his work in some of the UK’s leading drama schools has included creating the Masters Program in Classical Acting at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, which he also directed for its first three years. He now regularly coaches the core acting ensemble at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has also taught Shakespearean Acting for Rutgers University at London's Globe Theatre, and has worked regularly at India’s National School of Drama, in New Delhi. He regularly directs Shakespeare master classes and workshops at the Actors Center in New York. His theatrical work in prisons was featured in the BBC documentary Act of Faith, his published academic criticism has won international literary awards, and he has also taught workshops and seminars in Oxford University and in University College, Dublin. Rob has been coaching actors and contributing to rehearsals at Marin Shakespeare Company for ten years now, working closely with Artistic Director Robert Currier.
His involvement as a co-director for the coming season has stirred tremendous enthusiasm among Bay Area actors eager to work more closely with him. Rob is also always a witty, jovial addition to any group and generally the life of any party. When not in rehearsal rooms or theatres, and since he is now too old to be a competitive soccer player, his preferred sphere of activity is to be high up on alpine glaciers.
- Spotlight
on Lewis Carroll
 "Lewis Carroll," as Charles Dodgson
was to become known, was born on January 27 1832
into a predominantly northern English family inclining
towards the two good old upper middle class professions
of the army and the Church. His great-grandfather,
also Charles Dodgson, had risen through the ranks
of the church to become a bishop; his grandfather,
another Charles, had been an army captain, killed
most romantically in action in 1803 while his
two sons were babies. The elder of these -- yet
another Charles - reverted to the other family
business and took holy orders. He was mathematically
brilliant yet married his cousin in 1827 and retired
into obscurity as a country parson.
Young Charles was born in the little parsonage
of Daresbury in Cheshire. When Charles was 11
his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees
in north Yorkshire, and the whole family moved
to the spacious Rectory. Young Charles' "reading
lists" preserved in the family testify to
a precocious intellect: at the age of seven the
child was reading The Pilgrim's Progress. Charles
went to Oxford where his clear brilliance as a
mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical
Lectureship, which he continued to hold for the
next 26 years. The income was good, but the work
bored him.
In 1856 he took up the new art form of photography.
He excelled at it and it became an expression
of his very personal inner philosophy; a belief
in the divinity of what he called "beauty"
by which he seemed to mean a state of moral or
aesthetic or physical perfection. In his middle
age, he was to re-form this philosophy into the
pursuit of beauty as a state of Grace, a means
of retrieving lost innocence. This, along with
his lifelong passion for the theatre was to bring
him into confrontation with the Moral Majority
of his day and his own family's High Church beliefs.
He began writing -- poetry, short stories, sending
them to various magazines, and already enjoying
moderate success. Between 1854 and 1856, his work
appeared national publications as well as smaller
magazines.
In 1856 he published his first piece of work under
the name that would make him famous --'Lewis Carroll'.
In the same year, a new Dean arrived at Christ
Church, Henry Liddell, bringing with him a young
wife and children, all of whom would figure largely
in Dodgson's life over the following years. He
became close friends with the mother and the children,
particularly the three sisters -- Ina, Alice and
Edith -- taking the girls out on the river for
picnics. It was on one such expedition, in 1862,
that Dodgson invented the outline of the story
that eventually became his first and largest commercial
success -- the first Alice book. Having told the
story and been begged by Alice Liddell to write
it down, Dodgson was evidently struck by its potential
to sell well. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
was published in 1865, under the pen-name Dodgson
had first used some nine years earlier -- Lewis
Carroll. Alice was an immediate phenomenal success,
yet throughout his growing wealth and fame he
continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881
and he remained in residence there until his death.
He published Through the Looking-Glass and what
Alice found there in 1872, his great Joycean mock-epic
The Hunting of the Snark, in 1876, and his last
novel the two volume Sylvie and Bruno in 1889
and 1893 respectively. He also published many
mathematical papers under his own name, courted
scandal through his associations with the opposite
sex, toured Russia and Europe on an extended visit
(in 1867) and bought a house in Guildford, where
he died, suddenly of violent pneumonia, on January
14 1898.
-
Spotlight
on The Comedy of Errors: Plot Summary
Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse, is condemned to
death in Ephesus for violating the ban against
travel between the two rival cities. As he is
led to his execution, he tells the Ephesian Duke
that he has come to Syracuse in search of his
wife and one of his twin sons, who were separated
from him 25 years ago in a shipwreck. The other
twin, who grew up with Egeon, is also traveling
the world in search of the missing half of their
family. (The twins, we learn, are identical, and
each has an identical twin servant named Dromio.)
The Duke is so moved by this story that he grants
Egeon a day to raise the thousand-mark
ransom that would be necessary to save his life.
Meanwhile, unknown to Egeon, his son Antipholus
of Syracuse (with his Dromio) is also visiting
Ephesus--where Antipholus' missing twin is a prosperous
citizen. Antipholus of Ephesus' wife Adriana mistakes
Antipholus of Syracuse for her husband and drags
him home for dinner, leading to all sorts of confusion.
Meanwhile, Antipholus of Syracuse has fallen in
love with Adriana's sister Luciana, who is appalled
at the behavior of the man she thinks is her brother-in-law.
The confusion increases when a gold chain ordered
by the Ephesian Antipholus is given to Antipholus
of Syracuse. Antipholus of Ephesus refuses to
pay for the chain (unsurprisingly, since he never
received it) and is arrested for debt.
His wife, seeing his strange behavior, decides
he has gone mad and orders him bound and held
in a cellar room. Meanwhile, Antipholus of Syracuse
and his Dromio decide to flee the city, which
they believe to be enchanted, as soon as possible--only
to be menaced by Adriana and the debt officer.
They seek refuge in a nearby abbey. Adriana now
begs the Duke to intervene and remove her "husband"
from the abbey into her custody. Her real husband,
meanwhile, has broken loose and now comes to the
Duke and levels charges against his wife. The
situation is finally resolved by the Abbess Emilia,
who brings out the set of twins and reveals herself
to be Egeon's long-lost wife. Antipholus of Ephesus
reconciles with Adriana; Egeon is pardoned by
the Duke and reunited with his spouse; Antipholus
of Syracuse resumes his romantic pursuit of Luciana,
and all ends happily with the two Dromios embracing.
2005:Behind the Scenes
2004:Behind the Scenes
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