THE WINTER'S TALE

This production of The Winter's Tale is the culmination of eleven-year cooperation between the Maly Drama Theatre and the British Cheek by Jowl Theatre. This staging was made possible by support from the British Council, which represents Great Britain in the field of culture, education and professional training. With this performance the British Council opened the 1998 cultural events program dedicated to the 300th anniversary of Peter the Great's diplomatic mission to Great Britain.
The Cheek By Jowl Company
Founded by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod in 1981. The Company set as its goal - reading the great classics from a modern point of view. The actor and the play itself have the chief role in creating the performance and the new interpretation comes about during rehearsals. Sets and costumes must be simple and give the actors freedom to improvise. The Company gained popularity almost immediately. The theatre has toured many cities of the world, from Rio de Janeiro to Moscow, from Cairo to Kathmandu. Lev Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre with support from the British Council invited the Company to perform Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and As You Like It on the stage of the Maly Drama Theatre in St. Petersburg. In 1996 Time magazine named Cheek By Jowl among the top ten theatres in the world. The troupe performed John Webster's Duchess of Malfi at the Chekhov Festival 1996 in Moscow. Cheek By Jowl is currently planning the Moscow premiere of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

Declan Donnellan was born in England and his parents are Irish. He abandoned a career as a lawyer and has been working with the Cheek By Jowl Company he founded in 1981. He works regularly with the London National Theatre where he has staged Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega, Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen, Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim, and Angels in America by Tony Kushner. In 1994 he was invited to join the Union of Theatres of Europe. Declan Donnellan holds several Laurence Olivier Awards, including an award for "remarkable achievements". He has staged Sophocles' Philoctetes and Shakespeare's Macbeth at the Finnish National Theatre. This is his first performance of The Winter's Tale. This performance is the result of many years of cooperation between Declan Donnellan (Cheek By Jowl ) and Lev Dodin (the Maly Drama Theatre).
 
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 30
“Love is patient and is kind; love doesn't envy. Love doesn't brag, is not proud, doesn't behave itself inappropriately, doesn't seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; doesn't rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be done away with. Where there are various languages, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be done away with. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is complete has come, then that which is partial will be done away with. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become an adult, I have put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I was also fully known.”
1 Corinthians, 13:4-13
 
"...One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done: and there's no new thing under the sun. Is there anything where of it may be said, see this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us."
Ecclesiastes or, the Preacher
1:4,9-10
 
Disjointed thoughts towards the end of rehearsal
What is disguise? When we pretend to be someone else? When we pretend to change? But we cannot change ourselves and it is a tragedy to think that we can change other people. All we can do is see. Change happens but change is mysterious. Change is connected to time. Change is beyond our control.
It is a play about vanity, and about the lengths we will go to maintain our identities. It is a play about the dualism that lies at the heart of all vanity. You cannot be a tyrant without being a victim and you cannot be a victim without being a tyrant.
Why do we blind ourselves? ...So that we cannot see our powerlessness?...So that we cannot see love? ...How do we become so frightened of our true feelings, of our humanity, of our proportion?
We like to see ourselves in terms of linear narrative. We tell stories to control experience. Shakespeare flouts the rule of consequent time: the child hides in the adult, the old man is present in the child, birth stirs in death. Logic dissolves, and a truth beyond logic appears. A mystery manifests itself. A birth. An epiphany. At times moving, at times funny, at times frightening, at times sexy, at times improbable. Unconscious interconnections.
Shakespeare acknowledges the inadequacy of language. He knows words are often hollow and sometimes dangerous. But he also knows they are nearly all we've got to express ourselves. Perdita says to Florizel: “…cannot speak as well; So well, nothing so well; no, nor mean better: By th' pattern of mine own thoughts I cut out the purity of his.
The Winter's Tale is part of a group of later plays. In these plays characters who are potentially tragic, like Macbeth and Othello, are given a chance to see. The Winter's Tale is not a tragedy. Leontes is given a chance to see.
At the end of The Winter's Tale there is redemption and there is love. Independent, mysterious, confusing love, a love that will save us whether we like it or not, a love that will save us on its own terms and not on ours. A love we run from because it annihilates us.
Declan Donnellan, director

Winner of the Golden Mask Award