Twin Cities Shakespeare Readers

June 9, 2025
7:00 - 9:00 pm

"Musical Settings for Shakespeare" at Black Forest Inn

Black Forest Inn
9 E. 26th St.
Minneapolis, MN 55404

Performance is in room just east of the garden.

Free admission. Great food and drinks available to order.

"Musical Settings for Shakespeare" by Ken Takata and Sarah Zuber

In this edition, participating artists and performers: Sarah Callahan, Sophie Caplin, Eric Struve, and Sarah Zuber.

Description

We know that music played a crucial role in the original productions of Shakespeare's plays because there are over 70 texts that are supposed to be sung. Unfortunately, most of the original music has been lost. This is both a problem and an opportunity for theatre companies. On one hand, productions need to figure out what music to use, which can be tricky. At the same time, productions can also use music to solve "staging problems." These are practical problems that a company might want to address and solve. The problems could be created by 1) the text, 2) the physical circumstances of the production, 3) the audience, or 4) the general culture and context of the performances.

One example of a staging problem is the disparity between the demographics of the plays and the audience. Only 16 percent of the characters in Shakespeare are female. That's in stark contrast to most audiences that go to see Shakespeare, and it raises this simple question: can you use musical settings of the texts to bridge this demographic gap?

We'll look at this and other staging problems. I promise, by the way, that this isn't going to be a lecture. 80 percent of this will be musical performances featuring three vocalists, Sarah Callahan, Sophie Caplin, and Sarah Zuber. Musical styles include the Great American Songbook, period correct (i.e., circa 1600), Western swing, glam rock, parodies of radio ads from the 1940s, and several other genres, in other words, a little something for everyone.

Thursday, June 19, 2025, 7:00 pm.

“THE WINTER’S TALE”

MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2025, 6-8 pm

Minneapolis Central Library
(downtown Minneapolis)
300 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, MN 55401

Room N-202.

There is underground parking beneath the library, off 4th St. S., for about $5. Go in to the Library lobby and then in to the book stacks area. Take the elevator or stairs up to the 2nd floor, then go all the way to the left.

This is a discussion about the play, not a reading or showing of it.

SYNOPSIS (from the Folger Library)
• The Winter’s Tale, one of Shakespeare’s very late plays, is filled with improbabilities. Before the conclusion, one character comments that what we are about to see, “Were it but told you, should be hooted at / Like an old tale.”
• It includes murderous passions, man-eating bears, princes and princesses in disguise, death by drowning and by grief, oracles, betrayal, and unexpected joy. Yet the play, which draws much of its power from Greek myth, is grounded in the everyday.
• A “winter’s tale” is one told or read on a long winter’s night. Paradoxically, this winter’s tale is ideally seen rather than read – though the imagination can transform words into vivid action. Its shift from tragedy to comedy, disguises, and startling exits and transformations seem addressed to theater audiences.
• The “tale” of The Winter’s Tale unfolds in scenes set sixteen years apart. In the first part of the play, Leontes, king of Sicilia, plays host to his friend Polixenes, king of Bohemia. Suddenly, Leontes becomes unreasonably jealous of Polixenes and Leontes’s pregnant wife, Hermione. Leontes calls for Polixenes to be killed, but he escapes.
• Hermione, under arrest, gives birth to a daughter; Leontes orders the baby to be taken overseas and abandoned. The death of the couple’s young son, Mamillius, brings Leontes to his senses, too late. Word arrives that Hermione, too, has died. In Bohemia, a shepherd finds and adopts the baby girl, Perdita.
• Sixteen years later, the story resumes. Polixenes’s son, Florizell, loves Perdita. When Polixenes forbids the unequal match, the couple flees to Sicilia, where the tale reaches its conclusion. Perdita’s identity as a princess is revealed, allowing her and Florizell to marry; Leontes and Polixenes reconcile; and Hermione returns in the form of a statue, steps down from its pedestal, and reunites with her family.