Cymbeline in the Wooden O

Abstract

As company dramaturg at the Utah Shakespearean Festival for the past nineteen years, I have had the privilege of serving on design teams for over sixty professional Shakespeare productions, but none more exciting than our 2002 production of Cymbeline, one of the Bard’s most difficult and challenging scripts. Replete with over fifty characters, an episodic, sprawling narrative, and a denouement featuring twenty-for separate plot revelations in the final breathless scene, the play demands much from in its transition from page to stage. In the following words and pictures, I offer to take the reader behind the scenes in our word on this fascinating show, moving chronologically from the earliest stages of the process to design meetings, casting, rehearsals, and finally, to our opening night.