Festival Adds An Iliad Performances

Katie Fay Francis (left) as The Muse and Brian Vaughn as The Poet in An Iliad

CEDAR CITY, UT — In an effort to make what many are calling “the favorite production of the season” even more available, the Utah Shakespeare Festival has announced additional performances of the spellbinding play An Iliad. The largely one-person show, featuring Artistic Director Brian Vaughn as The Poet, is currently playing in the Randall L. Jones Theatre, but numerous additional performances have been added in the intimate Anes Studio Theatre beginning September 4 and continuing until October 13.

“In a season of great performances, An Iliad is becoming the favorite of many of our guests,” said Tyler Morgan, director of marketing and communications. “And we believe it will be even more powerful and thoughtful in the 200-seat Anes Theatre.”

Matt Adams of Front Row Reviewers Utah raved about the show: “To be honest, I was a bit apprehensive about attending An Iliad. This is a different kind of play than what I usually seek out,” he said in his review. “Soon after the production started, I found that I had not needed to worry. This is a lively and riveting production, and the story is accessible and impactful.”

Then he concluded with the following: “Good theater stays with you long after the performance ends, and at least for me, this has been the case with An Iliad. Don’t miss your chance to be impacted by this powerful piece.”

In this modern retelling of Homer’s classic, the Trojan War is over, and The Poet has seen it all. He lived through the unquenchable rage and endless battles, not just of this epic war, but of war through the ages. As he tells his tale in modern language, it at times threatens to overwhelm him; but he continues because he hopes, by shining a light on the history of man’s attraction to violence, destruction, and chaos, he can perhaps end it.

Of course, An Iliad is only one of seven plays onstage at the Festival right now, including Henry VI Part One, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Big River, The Foreigner, and Othello.

Tickets are now on sale at bard.org, by calling 800-PLAYTIX, or by visiting the Festival ticket office.

Thanks for the Great Company

Some of the actors in The Merry Wives of Windsor pose backstage before the show.

By John Ahlin

This is the third in a series of blog posts written by the actor playing Sir John Falstaff in this season’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.

It’s good to share the stage with great people. One of the funniest things I have even seen happened a few shows ago during The Merry Wives of Windsor. I, as Falstaff, deliver two pieces of bad news to the thinly disguised Master Ford,played by masterful Geoffrey Kent. Geoff takes a big gulp of sack, and does two quite funny spit-takes, one after each piece of news.

But on this intermittently rainy night the temperature and dew point collided and Geoff’s first spit-take condensed into a very visible cloud and floated away on the gentle breeze. I was looking away but turned just in time to glimpse the cloud and hear the audience laughing heartily at so odd a sight. Geoff and I mutually knew, with another spit-take coming, to let things simply play out. I again turned away, delivered piece of bad news two, heard the spit-take, and turned back only to see a brilliantly lit, eight-foot tall vaguely human-like vapor moving at me. I calmly stepped aside as the graceful apparition crossed the stage and exited down the stage left ramp into the night. The audience was in hysterics, leaving me plenty of time to play “What the hell was that?!” and myriad weather-related mimes. It ended with huge applause, but it was the silent communication Geoff and I had, born of seventy years of combined experience, which delivered the greatest spit-take of all time.

And not only that, after countless missed entrances in the history of showbiz, it was the first mist exit.

The honor of working with so many seasoned, gifted, and generous actors is one of the great pleasures of being a guest artist with Utah Shakespeare Festival acting company. Equally joyous is being around the young actors. They will often inquire of me what it takes to “make it,” but if they only knew how much they inspire me. In them, in a very pure form, I see the desire and passion that I can say, after all these years, is the key to a life in the theatre. 

An actor is his or her own toolbox. Most everything needed to succeed is within him or her.  Gratitude is one such tool, and so to express thanks to the young artists I’ll list just a few of the tools I’ve learned are very useful in “making it.”  

*Curiosity:*It is the fuel of the artistic life. Think, ponder, wonder, imagine. Bill Watterson, the Calvin and Hobbes author, loved his wife for understanding that when he was staring out the window, he was at work. 

*Hard Work:*You achieve the greatest height by toiling upward in the night. You won’t be on Broadway tomorrow, but you can start working towards it tomorrow.

*Tenacity:*Don’t give up. Dr. Seuss’s first book was rejected twenty-seven times. ‘Nuff said.

*Humility:*Assume you are no better than anyone, but know you are no worse. Your opinions have more value the less you express them.

Reputation: Acting is a profession with so many facets you can’t control. Who you are is something you can.

Courage: Know skeptical fish live the longest, but be brave and say yes to the seemingly impossible; otherwise you’ll never know what’s possible.

*Devotion:*Care, truly care, about the thing itself, whatever it is you choose to do. 

The Simpsons Writer to Visit the Festival

CEDAR CITY — Mike Reiss, writer and producer for the wildly popular animated television show The Simpsons, will be at the Utah Shakespeare Festival and Southern Utah University August 29–31. While here, he will be workshopping his hilarious play Shakespeare’s Worst! A Play on a Play as part of the Festival’s Words Cubed new play readings, as well as participating in a lecture/presentation and book signing sponsored by SUU’s premier event series, A.P.E.X.

Reiss’ new play will be presented as a staged reading in the Eileen and Allen Anes Studio Theatre on August 29 and 31 at 9:30 a.m. This hilarious and irreverent play, co-written with Nick Newlin, features a small town theatre company performing The Two Gentlemen of Verona. But one of the cast members is very unhappy: his career is going nowhere, he’s tired of the show, and he wants out—now. The reading will be followed by a discussion between the playwright, actors, and audience members.

Tickets are $10 at the Ticket Office, online at bard.org, or over the telephone at 800-PLAYTIX.

Next, SUU’s A.P.E.X. event series will feature Reiss in a one-hour presentation at 3:30 p.m. August 30 in the Great Hall at the Hunter Conference Center. It is a fun-filled presentation, loaded with rare cartoon clips, as Reiss shares the stories, secrets, and scandals from the long-running series. Afterwards, he will conduct a short question-and-answer session.

Then, he will move into the Great Hall lobby and sign copies of his book Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets, and Outright Lies from a Lifetime Writing for The Simpsons. Copies of the book will be available for sale.

Reiss has won four Emmys and a Peabody Award during his twenty-eight years writing for The Simpsons. In 2006, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Animation Writers Caucus. He has also written nineteen children’s books and jokes for such comedy legends as Johnny Carson, Joan Rivers, and Garry Shandling, as well as for Pope Francis! For his comedic contributions to the charitable group Joke with the Pope, in 2015 the Pope declared Reiss “A Missionary of Joy.”

Festival to Unveil Lady Macbeth Statue

A life-size statue of Lady Macbeth will soon join eight other Shakespearean characters at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. The latest installment in the Pedersen Shakespeare Character Garden will be unveiled August 21 at 11:30 a.m. The garden is located between the Randall L. Jones and the Engelstad Shakespeare Theatres on the Festival grounds.

The statue was made possible by contributions from State Bank of Southern Utah (SBSU), and it was sculpted by Stanley J. Watts.

The public is invited to the short program which will include a welcome by Executive Producer Frank Mack, as well as remarks from Festival Founder Fred C. Adams and SBSU President and CEO Eric Schmutz. Special presentations will be made by Adams and Donn Jersey, Festival development director. Officials from SBSU will perform the unveiling.

The beautiful bronze statue captures Lady Macbeth holding a candle and wandering the corridors of the castle, stricken by her role in the murder of King Duncan. A plaque at the base of the statue quotes a gentlewoman who sees the forlorn lady wracked with guilt: “Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise.”

Other statues in the character garden include William Shakespeare, Juliet, Sir John Falstaff, King Lear, Hamlet, Henry V, Cleopatra, and Titania (located at the west entrance to the Randall Theatre).

Desire the Spleen: Bringing out the Humors in Falstaff

John Ahlin backstage about to make his first entry of the evening as Sir John Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

By John Ahlin

This is the second in a series of blog posts written by the actor play Sir John Falstaff in this season’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Before nervously charging “over the top,” English World War I soldiers would often recite Henry V’s “Once more unto the breach” speech quietly to themselves. Likewise before entering a funny scene, a jittery actor will sometimes mutter the old quote “dying is easy . . . comedy is hard!”

Oddly, it wasn’t some great comedian or clown who expressed that sentiment, but distinguished English actor Edmund Gwenn. Famous for portraying Kris Kringle in the classic (but not quite laugh-riot) Miracle on 34th Street, Gwenn, on his death bed, reportedly suggested playing comedy is more difficult than shuffling off this mortal coil, and then died.

Being funny on demand is like trying to get the hiccups on purpose—difficult. So imagine the butterflies an actor feels, about to enter as Falstaff, knowing the knowledgeable Utah Shakespeare Festival audience is sitting there thinking “Oh boy, here comes the funniest character in all Shakespeare.” And worse, a knowledgeable actor knows that Falstaff’s first scenes in both Henry IV Part One and The Merry Wives of Windsor are not particularly funny. (Falstaff’s first scene in Henry IV Part Two, however, is hilarious.) 

Backstage before a comedy, some actors will want to draw up both knees and go fetal, but to me the trick is to grab those knees, yell “Cannonball!” and jump right in. Be fearless. Here are a few other quick tricks I use to get to Falstaff’s funny:

Go big, but go real.  I was trained in the Method and in the Catskills. Borscht Belt comedy is famously big, like Falstaff, but the last step in technically building a larger-than-life, loud, humorous character is, ironically, the first lesson in Method acting: truth. I explore, find, and play the realities of Falstaff—not comedy of comment or clowning, but comedy of behavior.

Cough up a hairball. That first laugh is vital, so I construct a small (but truthful) moment early on to tell the audience it is okay to laugh.  For example, as a just-awakened Falstaff in Henry IV Part One begins his groggy, arcane banter with Hal, I’ll comically cough up some reminder of the previous evening’s drunken carousing. This familiar “wait, what happened last night?” reality hopefully elicits a laugh while also detailing who Falstaff is, and where he is, in life.

Ask for the tea. Lunt and Fontanne, the famous American acting couple had simple advice: “Don’t ask for the laugh, ask for the tea.”  In other words: trust the material.  Once at a Twelfth Night talkback for students, I was describing how Shakespeare would often put humor in sad scenes. I told them a very funny Gravedigger was found in Ophelia’s grave, and a whole row of high school girls shrieked in unison. Then one cried out, “She dies?!” It turns out they were reading Hamlet in class and hadn’t got to that part.

I must remember to trust Shakespeare. He’s on my side. It’s natural to forget how comical The Merry Wives of Windsor is after many rehearsals, but its twists, turns, and surprises will be fresh, alive and humorous for the audiences seeing it anew. It hasn’t lasted 421 years as one of Shakespeare’s funniest comedies by accident.

The Liar: A Summary in Verse

Brandon Burk (left) as Cliton, Betsy Mugavero as Clarice, and Jeb Burris as Dorante in The Liar.

 ### By Kathryn Neves

Editor’s Note: Kathryn Neves has been writing blog posts and news releases for the Festival for several months now, and decided with this assignment to stretch her creative wings a bit. Her clever synopsis of The Liar, is written in rhymed verse, the same style as David Ives’s translation of the play being presented at the Festival.

Twins, disguise, and maidens who conspire
Are all a part of this season’s The Liar!
Now, all these shenanigans might make you dizzy;
So let this rhymed synopsis keep you busy.
We open with Dorante— a lying jerk,
And Cliton who just can’t make lying work.
When sly Dorante first meets the cute Clarice,
He thinks that she’s her BFF, Lucrece!
And Cliton falls in love with Isabelle—
Not knowing that she has a “twin from hell.”
Meanwhile, Dorante’s old dad comes into town
To get his son to wed and settle down.
He makes a deal with afore-mentioned Clarice
(Or, as Dorante might know her, sweet Lucrece.)
“No, don’t!” Says Dorante, thinking on the spot;
“I have a wife! And I love her a lot!”
The ladies have been watching this whole spiel.
They’ll meet Dorante. They’ll find out his weird deal.
But just in case, they’ll do a switcheroo.
It’s now “Lucrece” Dorante will come to woo!
Now Dorante courts “Lucrece” and not “Clarice,”
While Clarice acts as Lucrece’s mouthpiece.
And if you think it’s real confusing now,
Just wait. Dorante gets in a real row:
A fight with Clarice’s fiancé, Alcippe.
And now the real Lucrece loves Dorante. Eep!
Will dad find out that Dorante lied?
Will Dorante ever find a bride?
Will identities be unswapped?
Can this comedy be topped?
The Utah Shakespeare Fest has all of this!
Come and see. It’s not a play to miss.

Words Cubed New Plays Scheduled

The Utah Shakespeare Festival’s Words Cubed program for new plays is set to introduce audiences to two very different plays this season: Gertrude and Claudius, a prequel to Hamlet, will play August 24, 25, and 30 and September 1. Shakespeare’s Worst! A Play on a Play, a hilarious retelling of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, will be performed August 29 and 31.

“Being part of the birth of a new play is an exciting experience, and Words Cubed offers Festival audiences an opportunity to witness and participate in these amazing, original creations. The two plays under development this summer are fantastic, but in very different ways,” said Frank Mack, Festival executive producer. “Mark St. Germain’s new adaptation of John Updike’s novel, Gertrude and Claudius, is an innovative theatrical invention that will appeal to Hamlet fans, and anyone who likes great stories. Shakespeare’s Worst, by Simpsons writer/producer Mike Reiss is full of hilarious jokes, and getting to see and respond to the invention of comedy this good is a rare opportunity for Festival audiences.”                                             

Gertrude and Claudius is adapted by Mark St. Germain from the novel by John Updike, one of only three people to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice. It will be directed by Jim Helsinger, artistic director of the Orlando Shakespeare Festival. Gertrude and Claudius brings a new point of view to Hamlet, Shakespeare’s classic tale of guilt and revenge. The infamous couple serve as the villains in Shakespeare’s work, but this is a story of good intentions gone wrong. With ominous hints at the familiar story to come, this play shakes up what you thought you knew about Elsinore and the conflicted young prince.

Shakespeare’s Worst! A Play on a Play is written by Mike Reiss with Nick Newlin. Reiss is a writer for the animated television series The Simpsons. It will be directed by popular Festival actor Quinn Mattfeld. This hilarious and irreverent play features a small town theatre company performing The Two Gentlemen of Verona. But one of the cast members is very unhappy: his career is going nowhere, he’s tired of the show, and he wants out—now.

The staged readings of these plays will be in the Eileen and Allen Anes Studio Theatre at 9:30 each day, followed by discussions between the playwright, actors, and audience members. Tickets are $10 at the Ticket Office online at bard.org or over the telephone at 800-PLAYTIX.

Words Cubed is designed to nurture the new work of nationally-recognized playwrights and allow them to workshop their plays in front of an audience and then receive feedback from the actors and audience.

Tickets are now on sale for all Festival plays: Words Cubed readings of Gertrude and Claudius and Shakespeare’s Worst! A Play on a Play, as well as regular season full productions of The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry VI Part One, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, The Foreigner, Big River, An Iliad, and The Liar. For more information and tickets visit www.bard.org or call 1-800-PLAYTIX.

The Big Sir: Thoughts on Falstaff and the Festival

John Ahlin as Sir John Falstaff

By John Ahlin

Over the next few weeks I will be writing blog posts about the joy of acting at the Festival and the honor of playing big Sir John Falstaff. Here is the first:

Very near the end of the last Harry Potter movie the screen goes black, and the words “Nineteen Years Later” appear just before we see Harry, Hermione, and Ron greatly changed, yet the same. This little blog post could begin with a black screen that says “Three Years Later.”

I was last in Cedar City in 2015 and had the very high honor of appearing in the very last Utah Shakespeare Festival play performed in the Adams Shakespearean Theatre. It was a night to remember. After portraying Sir John Falstaff in the final heart-wrenching moments of Henry IV Part Two, we had an emotional ceremony onstage, summoning the spirits and echoes of all the Shakespeare plays performed in that magnificent Wooden O. Then audience and actors together solemnly walked in the dark one block over to what can be only described as an indescribable mass of incomplete concrete, amidst a confusion of construction materials. Simple words of hope and pledges of continuing were expressed, and at the perfect moment a beacon was illuminated, shining brilliantly into the heavens. Well here I am, three years later, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, again playing Falstaff (and if physics is correct, that beacon is three light years away, on its way to infinity).

You can imagine, as a returning guest artist, what a thrill it is to see the magnificent Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre up and running and the gorgeous Utah Shakespeare Festival campus alive and bustling. And like Ron and Hermione and Harry, while everything is different, the spirit, the desire, the fire—the magic—which is the Festival’s true essence is the same. It remains alive, growing, vital and masterful. Simply put: new location, same inspiration.

I can happily report that I love performing on the Engelstad Theatre stage. The audience, which to me sets the Festival apart, is right there, laughing, cheering, and so easy to connect with. I see their faces, as the Sir John Falstaff depicted in Merry Wives often speaks to them directly.

While some scholars insist that this Falstaff doesn’t hold a candle to the great Falstaff of the Henry plays, as the actor charged with breathing life into one of literature’s giants, I can tell you—it’s the same guy. He still has the acumen, wit, and weariness of the world’s ironies with which Falstaff of the Henriad is blessed/cursed. He still has a blind spot to duplicity, never imagining Hal would ever shun him, and likewise, when Mistress Ford apparently responds affectionately, he genuinely believes she has genuine love for him. The possibly true legend has it that Queen Elizabeth wanted to see Falstaff in love, and Shakespeare obliges. While Falstaff’s desperation for money is the spark, love is the flame that fuels and ultimately scorches him.

Wooden O Brings Scholars to Festival

Scholars from across the United States and beyond will be gathering in Cedar City August 6–8 to discuss “The Other in Shakespeare.” Now in its seventeenth year, the Wooden O Symposium, sponsored by the Utah Shakespeare Festival, the Southern Utah University College of Performing and Visual Arts, and the Gerald R. Sherratt Library, is a cross-disciplinary conference exploring Medieval through Early Modern Studies through the text and performance of Shakespeare’s plays.

The conference will feature two plenary speakers:

Madeline Sayet

Ma****deline Sayet will speak August 6 on “Shakespeare and the Invitation.” She is a director of new plays, classics, and opera and was named to Forbes magazine’s 2018 “30 under 30 List” in the Hollywood and entertainment area. She has also been honored as a TED Fellow, an MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow, and a National Directing Fellow and is a recipient of the White House Champion of Change Award. Raised on a combination of traditional Mohegan stories and Shakespeare, she was the Resident Director at Amerinda (American Indian Artists) Inc. in New York City from 2013 to 2016 where she developed new plays by Native playwrights and launched the Native American Shakespeare Ensemble.

Edna Nahshon

Edna Nahshon is Professor of Jewish Theater and Drama at the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York and Senior Associate at Oxford University’s Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Her specialty is the intersection of Jewishness, theatre, and performance, a topic on which she has written extensively. In 2016 she curated a major exhibition titled “New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bower to Broadway” at the Museum of the City of New York and prepared the exhibition’s extensive companion book which received the 2016 George Freedley Award Special Jury Prize for an exemplary work in the field of live theatre or performance. Her most recent book (with Michael Shapiro) is Wrestling with Shylock: Jewish Responses to The Merchant of Venice (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Presenters reading their papers will cover a host of topics, including “The Case of Morocco: Failed Immigration in The Merchant of Venice” by Stephanie Chamberlain, Southeast Missouri State University; “Gender Gymnastics: Joan of Arc, Queen Margaret, and ‘Othering’ in the three parts of Henry VI” by Brian Carroll, Berry College; “‘Be a Man’: Othello, Criticism, Race, and Hegemonic Masculinity” by Kelsey Ridge, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom; “A Stranger to His State: Prospero’s Isolation through Art”  by Sarah J. L. Chambers, University of Central Oklahoma; and many others.

After the symposium, selected articles will be published in The Journal of the Wooden O. The journal is published annually by Southern Utah University Press in cooperation with the SUU Center for Shakespeare Studies and the Festival. 

For more information, visit the website at bard.org/wooden-o-symposium or call 435-865-8333.

The Iliad: Fact or Splendid Fiction?

By Kathryn Neves

Almost everyone knows the basic story: the beautiful Helen, Paris of Troy, strong Achilles, and noble Hector. We all know about the River Styx and the thousand ships and the Trojan Horse. But at the center of all this splendid storytelling is one question: did the Trojan War really happen? After all, for centuries people have called it nothing more than a myth—a story told to teach children the perils of war and greed and the all-consuming power of the gods. Did it happen, or was it only a story? There’s no way Homer’s poem is true, is there? Is there any fact at all to The Iliad?

Until the 1860s, the world was certain the story was only a myth—that is, until the work of Heinrich Schliemann, a German archaeologist with a passion for Greek mythology. Digging at the modern-day city of Hisarlik, Turkey, Schliemann made an amazing discovery. Hisarlik is not one city, but nine; all built on top of one another (Stefan Lovgren, “Is Troy True? The Evidence Behind Movie Myth,” National Geographic, May 14, 2004). The whole site was a treasure trove of history just waiting to be discovered. Though most of these ancient cities didn’t seem to have anything to do with Homer’s masterful poem, two did: the sixth and seventh oldest layers, now usually called Troy VI and Troy VII.

Troy VI certainly matched Homer’s description. Schliemann found evidence of fabulous wealth, strong architecture, and a fairly large population. It was full of temples and tributes to the gods and all sorts of other Homeric-looking artifacts. So there it is, right? Question closed? We found Troy? Well, no. There was one thing wrong with this city; it wasn’t destroyed by war. It was destroyed by an earthquake! There were no glorious battles between Hector and Achilles, but instead between tectonic plates. On the other hand, some argue that Homer’s text does point to an earthquake. The Trojan Horse could be a metaphor for Poseidon: he was associated with horses, after all, and he was the god of the seas and of earthquakes. Perhaps The Iliad’s end battle was all just a symbol of the natural forces of the earth (Lovgren).

Then again, there’s more evidence to be considered: Troy VII. To be fair, it did not really match Homer’s description. It wasn’t as big and wasn’t as wealthy. But the ancient ruins fit the time frame for the Trojan War; and, most importantly, it was destroyed in battle. Archaeologists have uncovered arrowheads, slings, battle-fallen corpses, and other evidence of warfare. It’s possible, then, that Homer combined the two cities, both VI and VII, into one: it makes a better story that way, after all.

Still, with some evidence on the war’s side, there’s a lot we know didn’t happen. First and foremost, Helen: it’s very unlikely that any conflict was started over her kidnapping. Now, that doesn’t make it impossible. There’s historical precedent for wars beings started over an insult to a king. But there just isn’t any evidence to prove this point (Lovgren). And the other characters are probably completely fictional as well. Achilles, Hector, Paris, and the rest are probably completely myth. Not to mention the supernatural elements like Zeus and the Underworld and Hades, all just traditions of ancient Greek religion.

And then there’s other theories as to how Troy VII was destroyed; it’s very possible that it was defeated by the “sea people,” who were from what is now Italy. We know they passed through at the right time, according to ancient Egyptian records. And we know they ransacked every city they passed through. So there are other explanations for the battle-torn Troy VII. It might not have been the Greeks at all.

All in all, we don’t really know what happened between the Trojans and the Achaeans—if anything. All the evidence is so time-worn and flimsy that we’ll probably never know the full story. Maybe The Iliad is fiction, maybe it’s fact, or maybe it’s some combination of both. But it doesn’t really matter. Homer’s The Iliad, and this season’s play An Iliad, capture the human condition; through it we see the agonies of war and the benefits of bravery and nobility. Even if every word of it is fiction, the characters and their struggles still ring true.

The Festival production of An Iliad