2020's: The Winter's Tale
Discover the 2021 product of The Winter's Tale, reconceived for a world post lockdown
The Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the River Avon (2015) by Sara Beaumont © RSCRoyal Shakespeare Company
On Monday 16 March 2020, as the company of Erica Whyman’s production of The Winter’s Tale were starting their final week of rehearsals, theatres across the UK were closed, shortly followed by everything else.
After plans for the stage had been a continuous buzz, everything had been put on pause, the stillness of the pandemic articulated by the half-unloaded truck bearing the Winter’s Tale set still attached to the outside of the dark theatre.
Royal Shakespeare TheatreRoyal Shakespeare Company
Despite the uncertainty of a nation and industry in crisis, hope resounded throughout the company that the production would live on.
The Winter's Tale rehearsal photo (2020-02) by Topher McGrillis c RSCRoyal Shakespeare Company
Director Erica Whyman discusses her production
"It’s my favourite play, I think maybe of all time. Partly because it’s got sentimental value for me.
I directed it 20 years ago, and it was the first Shakespeare I directed in a tiny theatre called the old Southwark Playhouse. I loved doing it then and I learned an enormous amount about it, so revisiting it has been an enormous pleasure. It’s the only play I’ve ever done that with. I’ve occasionally revised something, but I’ve never come back to a play with a big gap. I’m different, the world’s different, the plays the same.
I love that it’s got all the things I remember loving about it. An extraordinary rollercoaster."
"It’s an incredible emotional journey The Winters Tale and I like those. And genuinely people say that about a lot of plays but I can’t think of one that goes through such bleak, frightening, tense, suspenseful tragedy. It’s like a thriller, like a psychological thriller I suppose.
And then you think you’re at true tragedy, a tragic ending, only to discover it’s actually... The comedy is absurd and delightful and it’s surprising, it paints worlds you had no idea were going to exist when you started watching, and then it bursts with theatricality."
In the play The Winter's Tale, Polixenes, King of Bohemia, has been on a nine-month visit to the court of his childhood friend Leontes, King of Sicilia, and his wife, Queen Hermione.
Leontes becomes convinced (wrongly) that his heavily pregnant wife has been having an affair with Polixenes, and believes the unborn child to not be his own.
The Winter's Tale rehearsal photos (2020-02) by Topher McGrillis c The RSCRoyal Shakespeare Company
"Really what makes it sing now is that it's about the human mind and the human heart. I think its one of the most forensic investigations in to what can go wrong in a mans mind. It was written after King Lear, and Leontes is a much younger man, probably in his thirties although often played older than that. And I think the idea of a man coming into his prime who completely loses a grip on whether they’re entitled to power or not, whether they’re right about anything or not, and whether they’re loved, whether they’re respected is actually an incredibly familiar story."
The Winter's Tale rehearsal photos (2020-02) by Topher McGrillis c The RSCRoyal Shakespeare Company
Set across a 16-year span from the 1953 coronation to the moon landings, Erica’s production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale imagines a world where the ghosts of fascist Europe collide with horrors of The Handmaid’s Tale, before washing up on a joyful seashore.
Social Distancing love hearts in The Dell Gardens for Shakespeare Snapshots (2020-08) by c The RSCRoyal Shakespeare Company
As the year went on, the 2020 Winter's Tale company, locked down in Stratford-upon-Avon, galvanized on different, independent projects.
Activity ranged from podcasting, to Zoom choirs, to making arts and crafts and comedy sketches for Culture Central’s online Midsummer Festival. The birth of The Stratford Six project also gave a platform for writers within the company to create and share new plays online.
From the months of August to September members of the company took centre stage in the Dell Gardens for ‘Shakespeare Snapshots’, a series of free, weekly outdoor pop-up performances.
The Othello Project
Born in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement that began after the unlawful killing of George Floyd, a group of Black, Asian and Bi-Racial creatives of the RSC company wanted to do something to contribute to the movement and create change.
Inspired by Shakespeare’s Othello as a study of the outsider, they decided to use art to challenge racism by creating a platform to champion the life and work of their Black and Asian ancestors, whose voices have been largely erased from history.
They set out to create an original series of standalone monologues that would explore the dangers and difficulties faced by these historical figures, each of whom was forced to assimilate into a White society in order to succeed or simply survive.
Drawn through a different cultural lens, in vastly different parts of the world throughout time, each piece explores what it is to be othered and oppressed. However, despite their inherent differences, it is the familiarity of their experiences that makes them fascinating and reaffirms the universal nature of the Black experience.
For more information and updates on the Othello Project, you can find them on Twitter and through their Blog.
Behind the scenes photo of The Winter's Tale set for filming (2021) by The RSCRoyal Shakespeare Company
A filmed version of Erica Whyman’s production of The Winter’s Tale will be broadcast on BBC Four around Shakespeare’s birthday in 2021, and will then be available on BBC iPlayer.
The Winter’s Tale film adaptation forms part of BBC Lights Up, an unprecedented season of plays for BBC TV and radio, produced in partnership with theatres across the UK and continuing BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine initiative.
The RSC Acting Companies are generously supported by The Gatsby Charitable Foundation and The Kovner Foundation.
The Winter's Tale and The Comedy of Errors are supported by RSC Season Supporter Charles Holloway.
The Winter’s Tale is supported by RSC Production Circle members Mark Thompson and Jane Blumberg-Thompson.
Shakespeare Snapshots and Royals Shakespeare Theatre productions are sponsored by Darwin Escapes.
The work of the RSC Literary Department is generously supported by The Drue and H.J. Heinz II Charitable Trust.
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