Anyway, I am currently directing my first theatre production since I worked for Caffeine Theatre and I kind of wanted to post my program note online. I didn't have a place to do it. It doesn't make sense to use the Caffeine Theatre blog, and our department doesn't have a blog, so I thought I would get my personal blog up and running again.
Here's the program note:
When I was asked to propose a “magical and fantastical” show
for this season, I thought of the work of Carlo Gozzi. As a theatre historian, I knew Gozzi’s plays
primarily because of his conflict with the playwright Carlo Goldoni. While Goldoni favored a more regularized,
literary comedy, Gozzi wanted to continue the use of masks and improvisation,
telling old stories in old ways. The Serpent Lady is a commedia dell’arte
fairy tale; in many ways this is a play about the magic of theatre. In our
production, the story is told by a group of fairies in collaboration with a
troupe of actors whose origins in commedia have adapted and changed over time. Our ensemble draws on a variety of theatrical
and literary traditions beyond commedia, including melodrama, Greek tragedy,
blason poetry, epic, and myth.
At its core, The Serpent Lady is a story about how
love can conquer not only death, but immortality. Farruscad and Cherestani must
place their faith in each other, a lesson that proves more difficult for
Farruscad than for Cherestani. Love is initially a force that weakens
Farruscad, but he ultimately approaches love in a new way that leads him to
greater maturity.Our production is also inevitably about gender, partly because
Gozzi is often accused of misogyny. Casting
an ensemble of sixteen women and one man represents an effort to challenge traditional
gender roles and to practice resistant reading.
Working with a new
translation has allowed us to mine the improvisational spirit of the play, and
to bring contemporary humor to a piece that inhabits the world of fairy tales: “Once
Upon a Time, in a faraway land...”
