Forest Meadows 2024
Michael Gene Sullivan’s adaptation starts a revolution by setting the play in the time it was written, but performed in secret by a rogue troupe of women actors. Michael, a mainstay of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, will deliver this raucous comedy with his well-honed satirical bite.
By William Shakespeare
Adapted and Directed by Michael Gene Sullivan
See our virtual Summer Season Playbill here: https://audienceaccess.co/MSC
Read background info about the production from our Dramaturg AeJay Mitchell here:
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
What did they do, all those brilliant, talented women performers in Shakespearean England? In France, Italy, and Spain adoring audiences could see men and women on stage, telling broadly hilarious and deeply passionate stories, while in England women on stage – if not officially banned – were virtually nonexistent until half a century after Shakespeare’s death. Yet his plays are full of women characters: Juliet, Porsche, Rosalind, Desdemona, Viola… How excruciating it must have been for all the unheralded, amazing women who knew they could not only act the pants off the men onstage but definitely the skirts! Women could attend the theatre in England, watching themselves represented and misrepresented in plays, but the life of an actor was judged too immodest and base for women to participate in. Or perhaps it would have been too liberating, and the Englishmen were afraid what the women might say. In any case, women onstage was not something England was ready for.
But what if…
What if a troupe of women decided to put on a play themselves? To act all the parts as women and men, to revel in the thrill of the comedy and danger, to have love scenes and sword fights, to secretly thumb their noses at the establishment who regarded them as too delicate to trod the boards? There aren’t records of this happening, but I’m sure it did. Often. In country barns and living rooms, in open fields by night and empty warehouses by day.
The plays were too good to be left to men.
Cast (in alphabetical order)
Wilma Bonet*
Keiko Shimosato Carreiro*
Emily Cummings
Valerie Fachman
Elizabeth Jones
Asha Bagal Kelly
Charisse Loriaux*
Rebecca Pingree
Artistic Team
Stage Manager: Anthony Aranda*
Assistant Stage Manager: Patrick Becerril
Set Designer: Nina Ball
Lighting Designer: Jon Tracy
Costume Designer: Tammy Berlin
Sound Designer: Ben Euphrat
Co-Properties Artisan: Nia Jacobs
Co-Properties Artisan & Object Animation: Rebecca Pingree
Fight Director: Dave Maier
Dramaturg: Aejay Mitchell
Intimacy Director: Cindy Goldfield
Michael Gene Sullivan is an Actor/Writer/Director/Activist based in San Francisco. He has been awarded both a Guggenheim Fellowship and Djerassi Arts Center Fellowship as a dramatist, and is an alum of the Playwrights Foundation. Michael’s directing credits include work with the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, the African American Shakespeare Company, Mystic Bison Theatre, TheatreFirst, and a dozen productions with the Tony and OBIE award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe (SFMT), where he is also Resident Playwright. In addition to his over two dozen plays written for SFMT as a playwright Michael’s critically-acclaimed stage adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 has been translated into six languages and performed in fourteen countries on five continents, The Great Khan premiered at San Francisco Playhouse, Sign My Name To Freedom premiered this past Spring, American Dreams opened on the Fourth of July, and his next play, Red Carol will open this December. Michael has taught playwriting at the American Conservatory Theatre, SFMT’s Young California Writers Project, has guest lectured on play creation or taught playwriting workshops at Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, USC, and for ten years Michael was also a Contributing Writer for The Huffington Post. As an actor Michael has performed at theaters throughout the Bay Area (including at all four of the Bay Area’s Tony-winning theaters), has toured nationally and internationally, off-Broadway and to the Kennedy Center.
Cast (in alphabetical order)
Wilma Bonet* (Ensemble)
Wilma was recently seen as Rocio in Wolf at the Door at PCPA. She played Mrs. Peacock in Clue at Lesher Center and Nurse in Romeo y Juliet at CalShakes. Before the pandemic, appeared in Ricardo Perez Gonzalez’s Don’t Eat the Mangos at the Magic Theatre for which she was awarded the San Francisco Bay Area Critic Circle Award. Anna Considers Mars at Playground and Mother Courage and Her Children at Ubuntu Theater, This Golden State Part One: Delano and Bruja at the Magic Theatre, A Streetcar Name Desire and The Tenth Muse at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Electricidad at the Mark Taper Forum and September Shoes at the Denver Center Theatre Company. Also performed with the American Conservatory Theatre, Campo Santo, Aurora Theater, Marin Theatre Company, Dallas Theatre Center, El Teatro Campesino and the San Francisco MimeTroupe. Film/television: ELEMENTAL, NONA, COCO for Pixar. What Dreams May Come, 8MM, Underwraps, Jack, Radio Flyer, Midnight Caller and Nash Bridges.
Keiko Shimosato Carreiro* (Ensemble)
Keiko Shimosato Carreiro, AEA, SAG/AFTRA , is a Collective Member, actor, designer, co-writer, and director with the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe. Most recently, Carreiro appeared in SF Playhouses’ premiere of My Home on the Moon, by Minna Lee, A.C.T. ‘s West Coast premier of Chris Chens’ Headlands, and as “Ma” in San Jose Stages’ production of Vichet Chums’ Bald Sisters. She has performed at American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Repertory, The Magic Theater, The Aurora Theater, Word for Word, Oakland Theater Project and Center Rep. In 2020 Keiko Co-founded Kunoichi Productions (Female Ninja productions) innovative, multidisciplinary theater combining Eastern and Western Theater Traditions. Carreiro is passionate about Theater as a vehicle towards social change. She is a visiting professor at Hollins University, Roanoke Virginia, in their Summer Graduate Program. Upcoming films include, The Truer History of the Chan Family by Eugenie Chan and Kinstukuroi by Kerwin Berk.
Emily Cummings (Ensemble)
Emily Cummings is thrilled to join this incredible team of artists for the summer. Having just returned from a semester with the British American Drama Academy, where she played the title role in Ben Johnson’s Volpone, she is excited to make her adult professional debut with Marin Shakespeare Company. As a child, she played Fredrika Armfeldt in Ensemble Theater Company’s A Little Night Music. She then went on to study theater and linguistics at Pomona College, where she played Masha in Chekhov’s Three Sisters and June in Emma Gibson’s If Nobody Does Remarkable Things, a new eco-drama, among other roles.
Valerie Fachman (Ensemble)
Valerie Façhman is an actor/singer/writer. In Chicago she toured prisons with Geese Theater Co., schools with Imagination Theater, and as Susan B. Anthony for Shen Theatre. She performed with American Blues, Chicago Shakespeare Co., Pegasus Players, etc., birthing world premieres roles like the Healer in Oedipus Requiem (Blind Parrot Productions) and Missy in Shrapnel in the Heart (Famous Door), where she met partner Scott Baker and joined his company, Performers Under Stress (PUS). Valerie co-founded Bright Arrow Theatre (branch of CityLit), to produce works by/about women. After child-rearing hiatus/move to SF, they reincarnated PUS and co-produced, performed, designed and wrote with them between 2006-2019. Valerie enjoyed performing at the Exit (Supremacy, Pastorella), with Theatre Pub (Lear), Collected Works (The Balcony), Shotgun Players (Our Town), and CMTC (How I Learned to Drive, BATCC & TBA nominations). They recently played Belaria in Cymbeline for Berkeley Shakespeare.
Elizabeth Jones (Ensemble)
Elizabeth is thrilled to be making her Marin Shakes debut! Elizabeth grew up in the Bay Area and is a graduate of Howard University with a B.F.A. in Theatre Arts. She was recently seen in 42nd Street Moon’s Mame, SF Shakes Cymbeline, the world premiere of A.C.T.’s YA production of The Code by The Kilbanes, Claudette in Theatre Rhino’s How Black Mothers Say I Love You, Nancy/Boz in Center REP’s A Christmas Carol, Radio in Caroline or Change (Ray of Light) and Motormouth Maybelle in Bay Area Musical’s production of Hairspray. Other credits include, Lady O in The Right Note (Spare Stage), Darlene in Dance of The Holy Ghosts (Ubuntu Theater Project), Deloris Van Cartier in Sister Act! (Berkeley Playhouse) Ronnette in Little Shop of Horrors (C.C.M.T.). Elizabeth sends love to her daughter Caira and thanks God, family and friends for their support. @elizasenoj.
Asha Bagal Kelly (Ensemble)
Asha Bagal Kelly is making her Marin Shakespeare Company debut in The Comedy of Errors. Bay Area audiences may have seen her as Ariel and Trinculo in The Tempest (Pear), Lizzy in The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley (CLTC), or Tessa in The Gondoliers (Lyric). Asha is also a filmmaker and photographer, and enjoys singing, playing viola, hiking, and playing with her cats.
Charisse Loriaux* (Ensemble)
Charisse Loriaux is incredibly grateful to be returning to the Marin Shakespeare Company after having the great joy of playing Olivia in Twelfth Night last season, directed by her Sister, Bridgette Loriaux. She has had the honor of working with the San Jose Stage, San Francisco Playhouse, Magic Theatre, Crowded Fire Theater, Shotgun Players, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Tabia African American Theatre Ensemble, Teatro Vision, Berkeley Playhouse, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2018, Charisse originated the role of Meiko in Jonathon Spector’s Eureka Day, which premiered at the Aurora Theatre, directed by Artistic Director, Josh Costello. Eureka Day is now Broadway bound and is set to hit the stage at the Manhattan Theatre Club in November of 2024. She is thankful for the opportunity to spark the flame which is now a blaze. Charisse also modeled for the world-renowned figurative artist, Richard MacDonald on the Grand Coda which was unveiled in the city of Shenzhen, China. Charisse is a graduate of SJSU and is a company member at Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre.
Rebecca Pingree (Ensemble)
Rebecca Pingree (she/her) is delighted to make her Marin Shakespeare debut with such an exquisite merry madcap cohort in Comedy of Errors. Recent credits include As You Like It with SFShakes on Tour, Molly in A Thousand Natural Shocks at PlayGround, May in People Where They Are at San Jose Stage, and Sulla/Alquist in Chris Steele’s adaptation of R.U.R. at Cutting Ball. Rebecca is also a regular deviser/performer for Analog Theatre’s Mask Monday series at Standard Deviant Brewing in San Francisco (analogtheatre.org).