March 16, 2020
Hello, dear friends.
Like everyone else, we have had to curtail activities due to COVID-19. The show advertised on this page (Shakespeare's Will) has been postponed to the upcoming Gladstone 2020-2021 season. Watch for dates when the season launches.
In the meanwhile, we hope we will be able to offer you Shakespeare in the Park as usual in July. We have recruited a charming cast (who will begin rehearsing June 1 if all is well), and are provisionally booking park dates with the City. We will reassess in a few weeks and post updates here.
In the meanwhile, we hope you and yours are well, and finding ways to stay connected as we all learn how to stay physically distant from each other.
To health, and in hopes of a beautiful (and relatively normal) summer!
Bear & Co.
“Well known in Ottawa as a director, I’d like to see more of Crowder as an actor as well.”
–Brian Carroll, Apt613 Theatre Review “King Lear at The Gladstone”
Part of the 2019-2020 Resident Company Season at the Gladstone.
Shakespeare's Will by Vern Thiessen toured Newfoundland in August 2017.
Four centuries after Shakespeare’s death, his plays are well known but little detail remains of his home life in Stratford. Vern Thiessen imagines this world, bringing us history in a modern idiom. Meet Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway - a woman to remember.
Director and Sound Designer Diana Fajrajsl *
Anne Hathaway Eleanor Crowder *
Production Stage Manager Jane Vanstone Osborn*
Tour Manager Sharon King-Campbell
Historical Research Linnea Rowlatt
Director and Sound Designer Diana Fajrajsl *
Anne Hathaway Eleanor Crowder *
Production Stage Manager Jane Vanstone Osborn*
Tour Manager Sharon King-Campbell
Historical Research Linnea Rowlatt
NEWFOUNDLAND TOUR DATES
August 3, 6:00pm, Kenny's Pond, St. John's TBC
August 6, 8:30pm, Ethie Room, Gros Morne Theatre Festival, Cow Head
August 8, 7:30pm, Stephenville Theatre Festival, Stephenville Arts & Culture Centre
August 9, 7:00pm, Beyond the Overpass Theatre, Gander Hotel
August 11, 2:00pm, Grand Bank Regional Theatre, Bait Depot
August 12, 7:00pm, Perchance Theatre, Cupids
Contact [email protected] for workshop information.
August 3, 6:00pm, Kenny's Pond, St. John's TBC
August 6, 8:30pm, Ethie Room, Gros Morne Theatre Festival, Cow Head
August 8, 7:30pm, Stephenville Theatre Festival, Stephenville Arts & Culture Centre
August 9, 7:00pm, Beyond the Overpass Theatre, Gander Hotel
August 11, 2:00pm, Grand Bank Regional Theatre, Bait Depot
August 12, 7:00pm, Perchance Theatre, Cupids
Contact [email protected] for workshop information.
*Appears by permission of Canadian Actors' Equity Association: This is a Canadian Actors' Equity Association Production under the Artists' Collective Policy.
Shakespeare's Will is produced by arrangement with Talent House Inc. 204A George Street, Toronto, ON M5R 2N5 [email protected] 416.960.9686
Shakespeare's Will was commissioned by the Free Will Players in 2002. It premiered on February 3, 2005 at the Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in a co-production between the Citadel Theatre and The Free Will Players.
Shakespeare's Will is produced by arrangement with Talent House Inc. 204A George Street, Toronto, ON M5R 2N5 [email protected] 416.960.9686
Shakespeare's Will was commissioned by the Free Will Players in 2002. It premiered on February 3, 2005 at the Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in a co-production between the Citadel Theatre and The Free Will Players.
Photos
Photos by Andrew Alexander Photography
Video Excerpt
The Creative Team
Vern Thiessen —Playwright
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Vern Thiessen's plays include
SHAKESPEARE'S WILL, APPLE, EINSTEIN'S GIFT, LENIN'S EMBALMERS,A MORE PERFECT UNION and many other works including musicals and TYA. He is the winner of the Governor General's, Dora, Sterling, and Carol Bolt awards for Outstanding New Play. Recently, he was named Artistic Director of Workshop West Playwrights' Theatre in Edmonton. Excerpt From Playwright's Note: I have played "fast and loose" with the will and it's meaning. Those readers seeking a play that sheds light on Shakespeare's writings may be disappointed in my play. So too those audience members who desire a historical representation of Anne Hathaway's life. I have done neither of those things. Instead, I have used the will as a springboard for my own imagination and my artistic goal -to explore the journey of a woman who faces adversity, rises above it, and ultimately re-kindles faith in herself. - Vern Thiessen, September 2007 |
Diana Fajrajsl—Director and Sound Designer
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Shakespeare's Will marks Diana's second
collaboration with Bear & Co. She is a forty-year veteran of the professional Canadian theatre. Diana has acted or directed for theatres from Vancouver to Newfoundland. She is also a sometime music composer, including incidental piano for the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton (Mephisto), an entire pentatonic score (Caucasian Chalk Circle) for students of the National Theatre School of Canada, and some choral work in the vein of Aaron Copeland for 17 Anonymous Women (Infinitheatre, Montreal). Diana is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada, and once wrote some bars of a fugue that were too difficult for her to play. |
Jane Vanstone Osborn—Production S.M.
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Based in Ottawa, Jane’s career has taken her across the country with operas, school tours, a visually impaired theatre company, puppet theatre, and almost every community hall in Nova Scotia. Some highlights of Jane’s stage management career include the Capital Critics Award–winning productions of And Slowly Beauty (NAC/Belfry), A Christmas Carol (NAC), and a Rideau Award for Stage Management on The Turn of the Screw. Jane has worked for five seasons as an ASM at the Shaw Festival, and for 10 years at the NAC as an SM, ASM, and shuttle van dispatcher. She has also worked at GCTC (Facts, The Net, Rock & Roll) and the Thousand Islands Playhouse (Little Shop of Horrors, Nunsense II, Lend Me A Tenor, Up The River). She is following in the footsteps of the amazing women in her life who shared their love of theatre, and her Mom, who taught her to type so she could always find a job and her essays would be legible.
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Tour Manager—Sharon King-Campbell
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Sharon King-Campbell is a storyteller, writer, and freelance theatre artist based in St. John's. She holds a BFA in Theatre from Memorial University and has appeared with and directed for companies across Newfoundland and Labrador for a decade. Her company, skc originals, has toured the province in partnership with For the Love of Learning, Inc. and the Arts & Culture Centres.
Sharon most recently directed Bear & Co.'s 2018 Cymbeline, and assistant directed Artistic Fraud's Between Breaths. Her latest piece, original, will premiere at the LSPU Hall in November as part of PerSIStence Theatre's 2018-19 season. |
Eleanor Crowder—Anne Hathaway
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Eleanor's interest is often in outdoor and site-specific work. Ottawa audiences know her for seventeen summers of outdoor Shakespeare in parks and curious sites across the city, her work as Mother Courage for Third Wall Theatre, the arsonist nun Mary in Wendy Lill's Sisters for GCTC, and a decade of successful gambles with Rachel Eugster where big musicals and big casts delight the Glebe.
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Media Resources
| Program-Killaloe.pdf |