Art Serving Community

The 8th season of the Woodward Shakespeare Festival brings you The Merry Wives of Windsor, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, and Henry V.

WSF is thrilled to bring you three passionate directors to share their vision of the power of theatre.

Gabriela Lawson: The Merry Wives of Windsor
I grew up doing ballet and community theatre here in Fresno, where I was born and raised. I am a graduate of the two-year intensive arts program at the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts. I have acted both locally and professionally outside of Fresno and I have had extensive training in dance, stage combat, acting technique, and Shakespearean theatre. I have seen five summers with the Woodward Shakespeare Festival, both on stage and as a part of the staged readings, and I am extremely excited to be directing The Merry Wives of Windsor this summer for WSF!

The Merry Wives of Windsor is the story of a knight, Falstaff, who has newly arrived in the British town of Windsor. Running low on funds, Falstaff decides to woo two wealthy local wives, Mistress Page and Mistress Ford, to gain access to their money. The wives soon discover he is attempting to woo them both simultaneously, and plot to play a trick on him for revenge. Their husbands discover that Falstaff is trying to woo their wives, and, while Master Page merely laughs it off, Master Ford becomes angry and suspicious. What follows is a deluge of pranks and jealousy and generally outrageous behavior, complicated by the fact that everyone is trying to fool everyone else.

Meanwhile, Mistress and Master Page’s daughter, Anne, is being avidly pursued by three different suitors, resulting in a challenge for a duel, some awful wooing, and more trickery until she is matched with the man she truly wants.

The version of this play that WSF and I will be presenting this summer will be a high-energy, unapologetically farcical production set in Edwardian Great Britain. The strict morality and prudishness of the Edwardian period in both dress and decorum provides the perfect setting for this play's antics to be the most offensive and outrageous, and, therefore, the most fun!

Picture refined drawing rooms, demure gowns, and top hats; elegant music and civil conversations over brandy. Now, picture it all unraveling until Falstaff is soaking and soiled, the parson and the doctor are trying to kill one another, and the townspeople are dressed as fairies running amok through the park at midnight.

It is this journey that we will take you on: Exploring the foibles of true humanity at its most ridiculous; the rash impulsiveness that everyone is capable of; the unexpected twists and turns that take us to the happy ending.

Maggie McClellan: A Streetcar Named Desire
I recently retired from Southern Oregon University where I taught for the last 13 years. There I directed The Medea, Cementville, Zastrozzi, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, House of Blue Leaves, ‘Night Mother (also acted in), Keely and Du, and improvised, wrote and produced a children’s play called Fable Tales; An Assortment of Animated & Amusing Allegories inspired by Aesop. At other universities I directed my own translations of several Greek plays, most notably a musical adaptation of Lysistrata.

I am deeply steeped in this art, and in the belief that truly great theatre can only be generated by a mass collaboration between the actors and the designers and the technicians and the audience… And this collaboration has to be infused with generosity and kindness and discipline and the dedication to creating a “sacred space” where everyone involved feels safe enough to let their hair down and go for it….

Theatre is the most visceral art form there is, more even more than dance or music. In theatre emotions are triggered by involvement and identification with the story and the people up there on the stage - the actors become the characters that tell the story. I want theatre to move me, to make me feel, to make me think, maybe shift a paradigm or two. The kind of theatre I enjoy watching is the kind of theatre I enjoy doing: it’s an organic, communal experience in which every member in the darkened space is having an experience that is moving. Theatre is a kind of ritual celebration of our deeply DNA driven need for hearing the stories of our lives over and over and over again in order to make sense of our existence.

With A Streetcar Named Desire I want to show how the power of love can save or destroy a person. Blanche and Stella both come from the sheltered background of the old south, ill-equipped for the realities of a world that is shifting from WWII to post WWII, as the old South shifts to the new South. They were both raised to be taken care of - by men. The war changes that game around For Blanche - her tremendous love for - and guilt over - the young husband she drives to suicide propels her into desperate sexual actions; seducing any man, let alone a younger man, is anathema to her upbringing. She was raised under the strict Victorian code of “nice girls don’t.” Post WWII is still a man’s world, and a woman who has slept with anyone not her husband is still a considered a slut and ostracized for that reason. That Blanche has descended into what amounts to nymphomania for the past number of years is an indication of her despair and the beginning of losing her hold on reality. But in my analysis of the play she should be much farther along the path of complete mental breakdown when she first appears. She should barely be able to carry off any semblance of normality and should slip into paranoia and psychotic behavior much earlier than is generally portrayed. When she steps off the streetcar she has already broken down and become utterly unable to function, and is teetering on the verge of insanity when she arrives at Elysian Fields, a deliberate reference to the Greek underworld by Williams…. Stanley becomes her Charon, the boat-man who ferries the souls of the dead across the river Styx by raping her. His brutality loosens her fragile grip on reality entirely and she - in effect - “dies” at his hands.

Adam Meredith: Henry V
Previously for WSF Adam has played title roles in Romeo and Juliet (Romeo, unfortunately-not Juliet) and Hamlet, has played principal roles in King Lear, Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing.

Regionally he has worked for The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, First Stage Milwaukee, Chicago Dramatists and Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. In two seasons with Oak Park Festival Theatre he appeared in their lauded Of Mice and Men as Curley and their Epic Henriad as Hotspur/Wort in Henry The Fourth Pt 1 & 2 as well as serving as Assistant Director on Henry V.

He has assisted in the productions of The National Theatre of Scotland's off site performance of Black Watch, Druid Theatre Company of Ireland's The Cripple of Inshmaan and Belarus Free Theatre's Being Harold Pinter for Chicago Shakespeare's World Stage Program. He is a Producing-Director for Gorilla Tango Theatre production syndicate.

Locally he directed The Tempest for ART and was seen in their productions of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Arcadia, as well as The Shape of Things and Marisol for Epic Theatre.

Adam is a CCPA graduate from Roosevelt University, holds an MFA from Ohio University and is a proud member of Actors Equity Association.