Cain's EQUIVOCATION Opens At The Oregon Shakespeare Festival On 4/18

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival will open the world premiere production of Bill Cain’s Equivocation on April 18 at 8:00 p.m. in the Angus Bowmer Theatre. The play will run through October 31.
 
This smart, complex, engaging play involves Shakespeare (spelled Shagspeare or Shag in the play) and his company of players in 1606 during the reign of King James I. Robert Cecil, minister to King James I, commissions Shakespeare to write a play about the Gunpowder Plot of 1605—telling him to add some dialogue complimentary to the king and witches. The king wants witches. The King’s Men, Shag’s theatre company, play about 20 roles: conspirators, executioners, priests, jailers, court officials and characters in two unnamed plays that we now know as King Lear and Macbeth. Their verbal acuity adds a dark humor to leaven the potentially perilous task before them. The play explores Shakespeare’s struggle to write a play that will please—or at least not offend—the king, and what it means to tell the truth, to equivocate—and to lie—in politics, art and life.
 
Audiences will find that Equivocation deeply resonates with the political intrigues of Macbeth and Henry VIII. Macbeth is now playing in the Angus Bowmer Theatre and will run throughout the season, and Henry VIII will open on the Elizabethan Stage June 12 and run through October 9.
 
Associate Artistic Director and scenic designer Christopher Acebo has created a space reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre that serves varied settings, including court, prison and rehearsal stage. The many costumes for the numerous roles are designed by Resident Costume Designer Deborah M. Dryden. Lighting is by Christopher Akerlind; music and sound by Andre Pluess. Lue Morgan Douthit and Barry Kraft are dramaturgs on the project, and Shana Cooper is assistant director and the Phil Killian Directing Fellow.
 
The cast features Anthony Heald as Shag, Richard Elmore as Richard, Jonathan Haugen as Nate, JOHN TUFTS as Sharpe, Gregory Linington as Armin, and Christine Albright as Shag’s daughter Judith.
 
Tickets are available online or by calling the Box Office at 541-482-4331 or 800-219-8161.
 
Equivocation was developed at the Ojai Playwrights Conference, Robert Egan, Artistic Director/Producers, as part of the New Works Festival at TheatreWorks, Palo Alto, CA, Robert Kelley, Artistic Director, Phil Santora, Managing Director.
 
Equivocation is the recipient of The Edgerton Foundation 2008 New American Plays Award.  Lead Sponsors of this production are Roberta and David Elliott and The Goatee Foundation.  Production Partners are Charlotte Lin and Robert P. Porter, Yogen and Peggy Dalal, and The Kinsman Foundation. The production is also supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.