Shakespeare & Company launches its expanded Fall Foliage season with the world premiere of The Scarlet Letter, beginning previews September 7.
Best-selling author Dr. Carol Gilligan has created a new adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, and she joins forces with Artistic Director Tina Packer directing a company of ten actors on a journey through the classic 17th century tale of a young woman accused of adultery and her struggle for redemption.
Traditionally performing in the 99-seat Spring Lawn Theatre or 108-seats Stables Theatre at its former home, The Mount, Shakespeare & Company's Fall Foliage season now expands into the 473-seat Founder's Theatre and runs longer without a break from the summer season, this year until November 3.
Performances are every Friday and Saturday night at 7:30 and Sunday at 2:00 pm. And for the first time, seven student matinees are being offered at 10:00 am every Friday. Special packages for student matinees, senior, and group rates are available through the Group Tour Office at (413)637-1199 ext.132 or groupsales@shakespeare.org.
Press Opening, Saturday, September 14, is followed by a champagne and dessert reception. For tickets and information call the Box Office at (413)637-3353 or visit the website at www.shakespeare.org.
"As we move into producing more of the work of Berkshire writers, The Scarlet Letter became an obvious choice for us," says Packer. "Hawthorne is one of the Berkshires' most prominent writers, and The Scarlet Letter features a strong woman's role at the center of it. When I was thinking about what we should do for our fall production, I had just read Carol's analysis of The Scarlet Letter in her new book, The Birth of Pleasure. It seemed to have a real resonance for our age.
"The whole idea of womens' voices and womens' sensibilities being able to break through a rigid framework is very near to my heart. The Birth of Pleasure is so sensitively written, so multi-faceted in its ability to look at the world in the way power is structured, Carol was an obvious choice to adapt the novel. Carol and I have been dear friends for over 20 years and have collaborated on many projects. Because of my own work in the corporate world, and with Shakespeare's plays, I am very conscious about internalized and externalized repression and opportunity. Carol is on the leading edge of all this work."
Set in the Massachusetts Puritan Colony of Boston circa 1650, The Scarlet Letter is the story of an accused adulteress, Hester Pryne, who is placed at the center of a rigid and puritanical society. The play opens with Hester, wearing a badge of shame (a scarlet letter A), standing on a scaffold with her illegitimate daughter, Pearl, being publicly humiliated as part of her forced penitence ordered by the city magistrates, Governor Bellingham and the Reverends Wilson and Dimmesdale.
Hester is charged to confess the name of the child's father, presumed to be in the colony, but she refuses. In the crowd of on-lookers, her husband, Roger Chillingworth, a doctor, appears. Hester is astounded at his sight and is about to speak, but he motions her to be silent.
Hester has not seen or heard from her husband in over two years and had thought he had died at sea. Later, in jail, Hester again refuses to confess the name of the child's father to her husband, and he requests she not reveal his identity or their relationship. Humiliated and jealous, Chillingworth vows revenge and sets out on a course to find out the identity of the illegitimate child's father.
Meanwhile, Rev. Dimmesdale, who has always defended Hester's right to silence, is beginning to show signs of a serious illness, and Chillingworth, who is taking care of Dimmesdale, now suspects him to be Pearl's father. Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the forest and plot their escape from the colony, but not before Dimmesdale publicly reveals a final truth that changes their lives forever. The last scenes of the story are interpreted by Pearl, now a young woman, in an Epilogue.
"In my research for The Birth of Pleasure I was struck by the resonance between what I was hearing in the contemporary context and what Hawthorne was writing," says Gilligan. "Hawthorne's brilliant insight -- he is writing now in 1850, at the time of Brook Farm and the Abolitionist Feminists -- was that the very qualities that render a woman able to see the iron framework of society also disable her as an adulterated woman. He captures it all in the letter A, which, as the story explains, means Able as well as Adultery. The central theme in my book, The Birth of Pleasure, is the tension between love and patriarchy. This is also the theme of The Scarlet Letter."
Gilligan, a professor at New York University, was the first Patricia Albjerg Graham Professor of Gender Studies at Harvard University (The Harvard Center for Gender Studies was founded in 2001 to honor Gilligan and to continue her work) and has taught in England at the University of Cambridge, and at New York University School of Law.
Her 1982 book, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development, is described as "the little book that started a revolution," and has been translated into 17 languages. Gilligan is also co-author with Lyn Mikel Brown of Meeting at the Crossroads. Her latest book, The Birth of Pleasure, was published by Knopf in May. Gilligan's fiction is included in Ulrich Baered's book, 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11, which is part of a commemorative event to be held at the World Trade Center site this fall. The Scarlet Letter is Gilligan's first play.
"Gilligan's brilliant expose of these canonical assumptions, and her construction of new paradigms of girls' development have had a resounding impact on psychology. In The Birth of Pleasure she stakes a new claim as an imaginative writer, grounding her vision in empirical research." - The Times Literary Supplement
The cast includes Jason Asprey as Dimmesdale, Jonathan Croy as Governor Bellingham/chorus, Dave Demke as Reverend Wilson/chorus, Mary Guzzy as Mistress Hibbard/chorus, Michael Hammond as Chillingworth, Kate Holland as Pearl, Jennie Israel as Hester Pryne, Brian Mason as townsperson/chorus, Tom Wells as townsperson/chorus, and Catherine Taylor-Williams as townsperson/chorus.
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Winter Storm Warning Issued for Berkshires
Another snowstorm is expected to move through the region overnight on Friday, bringing 5 to 8 inches of snow. This is updated from Thursday's winter weather advisory.
The National Weather Service in Albany, N.Y., has posted a winter storm warning for all of Berkshire County and parts of eastern New York State beginning Friday at 4 p.m. through Saturday at 1 p.m.
The region could see heavy to moderate snowfall rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour overnight, tapering off Saturday morning to flurries.
Drivers should exercise caution on Friday night and Saturday morning, as travel conditions may be hazardous.
Saturday night should be clear and calm, but warming temperatures means freezing rain Sunday night and rain through Monday with highs in the 40s. The forecast isn't much better through the week as temperatures dip back into the teens with New Year's Eve looking cloudy and frigid.
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