Chesapeake Shakespeare Company Presents THE WINTER'S TALE: A Fantasy About The Miracles Of Birth, Life, And Love

Greet the arrival of spring with an enchanting play about the magnificent power of love and the resilience of the human spirit. Chesapeake Shakespeare Company presents Shakespeare's medieval fantasy, The Winter's Tale, now through April 7, 2018, in the downtown theater at 7 South Calvert Street, Baltimore, MD 21202.

A poetic and magical epic, The Winter's Tale celebrates the perpetual cycles of birth, life, and death in nature and in humankind. The story follows one royal family for 16 years, through seasons of goodness and evil, humor and sadness, romance and knavery, folly and forgiveness.

In the story, the King of Sicilia irrationally accuses his queen of infidelity, and through his foolishness, loses her and their son. He banishes their newborn daughter, who is carried to a faraway land and abandoned. (Enter and exit here, the famous bear. And oh, what a bear!) The oracle warns that the king shall have no heir "if that which is lost be not found." During the long, dark winter of the king's repentance, the lost princess blooms into a lovely young lady among shepherds far from the cold royal court. In the springtime of her youth, unaware of her birthright, she finds a love who takes her back to Sicilia. Can the estranged family be reconciled after such tragedies? As one of the play's key characters says, "It is required you do awake your faith."

"The Winter's Tale is Shakespeare unleashed," says Isabelle Anderson, the play's Director and the theatre company's Distinguished Artist-in-Residence. "After scaling such Mount Everests as Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, in which one central character was the heart of the story, here Shakespeare writes something completely different. Not one mountain, but the Himalayas! Each one of the play's characters has a mountain to climb. It is a panorama of humanity."

One of the play's many highlights is a scene often cut by directors - the colorful herdsmen's dance of the satyrs, an ancient rite of spring taking place at a sheep-shearing festival. Anderson chose to retain it for its exuberance, earthiness, and joy. The play fulfills a dream for Anderson, a film and stage actress and renowned acting instructor who has been with Chesapeake Shakespeare since 2005. She wanted to train a hand-picked group of the company's actors in movement, mask, and other acting techniques before casting them in the play. They have worked together since June 2017 to achieve the company's first production of The Winter's Tale.

The Winter's Tale runs March 9 - April 7, 2018, at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company's downtown theatre at 7 South Calvert Street, Baltimore, MD 21202. Performances are Thursdays through Sundays, and include a matinee on Easter Sunday, April 1, 2018, at 2pm, with a pre-show egg hunt in the theatre. Tickets are available online at ChesapeakeShakespeare.com or by phone at 410-244-8570.

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