England Abroad Presents “The Winter’s Tale”
Love, suspicion, misperception, jealousy, hatred, loss, forgiveness, redemption, and restoration—such is Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, performed movingly in November by students recently returned from the England Abroad.
Moments after the play opens, suspicion casts a chill upon the scene. False accusation leads to imprisonment, where a child is born. Later abandoned in the wilderness, the baby girl is found and raised by a loving shepherd. About 16 years after her birth, the child—now a beautiful, young woman—is reunited with her parents, who are themselves reconciled, freed at last from the earlier accusations that had separated them. Despite its long winter of suspicion and mistrust, the play ends with a festive air made possible by forgiveness.
The idea of winter ice melting into spring carried over from the script to the design of the production. Students developed a method for ice-dyeing fabric for the costumes, resulting in rich patterns. And the set and lighting design reflected cold winter thawing into warm spring.
Sharing Lessons from Abroad
The depth behind the students’ performances showed the benefits of their work abroad. In particular, they had carefully developed their characters based on research at the British Library, Royal Shakespeare Company archives at Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, and acting workshops at The Globe Theatre in London. Students also created a lobby display sharing details about the play and its time period. Among the topics covered were character analysis, religious history, the role of women, and the play’s place in Renaissance England.
“The England Abroad program is designed to integrate the worlds of English and Theatre,” England Abroad co-leader and English professor Dr. Heidi Snow notes. “By erasing the lines between these two disciplines, the students can see that the skills developed in both literary analysis and acting practice are necessary to bring to life a Shakespeare production.”
Forgiveness and Restoration
Reflecting on her literary study of the play, junior Abby Strub notes that “Shakespeare uses the play’s romantic structure to reach its full potential as a tragicomedy. Hope and grace are absent, only to return in a fuller and sweeter glory. What is good must triumph in a romance, however long it takes, and nowhere is this truer than in The Winter’s Tale.”
Professor Chrissy Steele, the play’s director and abroad co-leader, extends that point, noting the timeless value of the play’s focus on forgiveness and reconciliation. “This speaks to our world and individual lives today,” she notes. “These journeys are not always easy, but as our experience of putting on this play has shown us, we are always changed by them.”