Classics In Context Announces Upcoming Discussions

Classics in Context fulfills offers audience's in depth information on the plays after attending each production. Discussions with scholars and artists are on Preview Nights July 4, July 11, July 18, and July 25 following the performance. CiC offers audiences a guide to the season through the critical historical, artistic, and cultural perspectives wound into the words of each individual play.

Throughout the year, TAM works in partnership with community-based arts, cultural, and educational organizations using theatre and the works of Shakespeare to build community and enhance civic engagement.

Project Scholar: Benjamin Bertram, Associate Professor of English, University of Southern Maine

Benjamin Bertram's areas of interest include sixteenth and seventeenth-century English literature and culture, Shakespeare, early modern studies, ecocriticism, animal studies, film studies, and critical theory. His new book, BestialOblivion: War, Humanism, and Ecology in Early Modern England, was published in June of 2018. The book is part of a series for Routledge entitled "Perspectives on the Nonhuman." His publications include articles in the Routledge Handbook on Shakespeare and Animals (forthcoming), Modern Philology, English Literature, Exemplaria, and boundary 2. His first book, The Time is Out of Joint: Skepticism in Shakespeare's England, appeared in 2004.

Merry Wives of Windsor | July 4 following the 7:30 p.m. performance
Dreaming of Falstaff: Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor

Richard Brucher, Associate Professor of English, University of Maine at Orono
Richard Brucher's areas of specialization include Shakespeare and English Renaissance drama, modern American and British drama. In addition to courses on a wide range of dramatic subjects on both the undergraduate and graduate levels, Professor Brucher has taught extensively on technical writing and editing, and argument.

Catherine Weidner, Merry Wives of Windsor Director

Catherine Weidner is a director, teacher, and actor. At TAM, she has directed Othello (2017), As You Like It (2014), and Two Gentleman of Verona (2012). She is Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts at Ithaca College. Professional credits: Nebraska Repertory Theatre, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, The Kennedy Center, Center Stage, Arena Stage, The Guthrie Theater, Theatre de la Jeune Lune, La Jolla Playhouse. Training: BFA Acting, Ithaca College; MFA Directing, University of Minnesota, Complicite, Second City, The Neighborhood Playhouse. Prior teaching: DePaul University, ACA.

Ken Ludwig's Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery | July 11 following the 7:30 p.m. performance
The Detective of our Dreams: Ken Ludwig's Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery

Laura Cowan, Associate Professor of English, University of Maine at Orono
Laura Cowan is the editor of the Centennial Essay Collection, T. S. Eliot Man and Poet (1988) and a previous Managing Editor and Co-Editor of the National Poetry Foundation journal Paideuma: Studies in American and British Modernist Poetry.

Matthew Arbour, Ken Ludwig's Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery Director
Matthew Arbour previously directed Romeo and Juliet (1999), Tartuffe (2012), The Real Inspector Hound (2015), and The Barber of Seville (2016) for TAM. His work has been seen Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway and around the country. He began his career as dramaturg/literary manager of Portland Stage Company from 1992-1998, is a Drama League Directing Fellow, a proud member of SDC, and a graduate of Bowdoin College and the University of Washington in Seattle.

Hamlet | July 18 following the 7:30 p.m. performance
What Dreams May Come: Shakespeare's Hamlet

Benjamin Bertram, Associate Professor of English, University of Southern Maine
Benjamin Bertram's areas of interest include sixteenth and seventeenth-century English literature and culture, Shakespeare, early modern studies, ecocriticism, animal studies, film studies, and critical theory. His new book, Bestial Oblivion: War, Humanism, and Ecology in Early Modern England, was published in June of 2018. The book is part of a series for Routledge entitled "Perspectives on the Nonhuman." His publications include articles in the Routledge Handbook on Shakespeare and Animals (forthcoming), Modern Philology, English Literature, Exemplaria, and boundary 2. His first book, The Time is Out of Joint: Skepticism in Shakespeare's England, appeared in 2004.

Caroline Bicks, Professor of English and Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, University of Maine, Orono
Caroline Bicks recently joined the department of English at the University of Maine as the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair of Literature. An associate professor of English at Boston College since 2002, she taught courses in early modern literature and culture. In addition to Shakespeare, Bicks' other areas of specialization include women and gender in early modern literature and culture, early modern drama, the history of science, and girlhood studies. Bicks' humorous life-writing has appeared in the "Modern Love" column of the New York Times, on NPR's "All Things Considered," and in the show and book "Afterbirth: Stories You Won't Read in a Parenting Magazine." Most recently, she co-authored an irreverent Bard-meets-life cocktail book, "Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas."

Dawn McAndrews, Producing Artistic Director and Hamlet Director, Theater at Monmouth
Dawn has worked as a producer, educator, and artistic director at theatres across the country including Shakespeare Theatre Company, Steppenwolf Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Arena Stage, Portland Stage Company, and Shakespeare Festival St. Louis. Directing credits include: The Pajama Game (UMO); Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Colby); The Language Archive (Public Theatre); Richard III, Macbeth, Peter and the Starcatcher, Boeing, Boeing, Love's Labour's Lost, The Winter's Tale, Romeo and Juliet, The Mousetrap, Henry IV Part 1, Of Thee I Sing (TAM); The Glass Menagerie; Holiday, and Three Days of Rain (1st Stage); Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, Timberlake Wertenbaker's Antigone, as well as adapting and directing A Christmas Carol at Portland Stage.

Intimate Apparel | July 25 following the 7:30 p.m. performance
Embroidered Dreams: Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel

Mazie Hough, Associate Professor of History and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of Maine at Orono
Mazie Hough is an early twentieth century American Social Historian with a focus on women's history. Her work has included research on women and reform, legal history, social activism, and Maine women's history. Mazie teaches Introduction to Women's Studies, Women's Studies Methodology, Womanhood in America, Women and Globalization, and is also co-teaching with Carol Toner, coordinator of the Maine Studies Program and Research Associate and Assistant Professor in History, a series of courses on Women and War.

Josiah Davis, Intimate Apparel Director
Josiah Davis is an LA based director, choreographer, and actor from Dallas, TX whose work melds expressive movement, live music, emerging technology, and ancestral ritual to give new life to physical storytelling. He is a UCLA graduate, current Brown/Trinity MFA Directing Candidate, and the Associate Artistic Director of On The Verge Repertory Theatre in Santa Barbara. Directing credits include: Outcry, Sweet Child, From White Plains, Trouble In Kind, Venus, Mirage, Julius Caesar, and How We Got. Upcoming: We Are Proud to Present... at Brandeis University. www.josiah-davis.com

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