Performances Run August 11 – September 2
“Quirky, lovely, funny, and powerful.” – Associated Press
(Lenox, MA) – Shakespeare & Company presents Heisenberg by Tony Award-winning playwright Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), directed by Founding Artistic Director Tina Packer. Featuring Company veterans Tamara Hickey and Malcolm Ingram, performances run in the Tina Packer Playhouse August 11 – September 2.
“They are, to say the least, an unlikely pair,” said director Tina Packer. “He’s a 75 year-old butcher, introverted, seemingly of Irish descent, but living in London. She’s a forty-something American, excessively extroverted, perhaps a social worker with a missing son. They meet on a park bench. By chance, they affect each other. They change each other’s lives. Simon Stephens is a master of what can’t be seen, but what is sensed, the effect of random events upon the lives of human beings or are they not random?”
Tina Packer directs this intimate production starring Company veterans Tamara Hickey (Georgie) and Malcolm Ingram (Alex). The creative team includes Juliana von Haubrich (Set Design), Dan Kotlowitz (Lighting Design), Charlotte Palmer-Lane (Costume Design), Amy Altadonna (Sound Design), and Hope Rose Kelly (Stage Manager).
“A news story about a man I knew in my childhood haunted me,” said Playwright Simon Stephens. “He was a man in his eighties in my home town of Stockport and a younger woman had inveigled into his life, and he had given her his life savings. I wondered at the cruelty of that and how desperate the woman must have been. I got to wondering about what would happen if the two people affected one another. I became, at the same time, fascinated by the way in which Werner Heisenberg’s quantum theories seemed to define the way in which people lived. How, unless we are seen or engaged with, we barely exist. It struck me as a metaphor for loneliness and the volatility of being human.”
Tickets for Heisenberg are available online at shakespeare.org, or by calling Shakespeare & Company’s box office at (413) 637-3353. The Tina Packer Playhouse is air-conditioned and wheelchair accessible. Shakespeare & Company is located at 70 Kemble St. in Lenox, Massachusetts. Heisenberg is generously sponsored by Eleanor Y. Lord and Margaret H. Wheeler.
The Company’s 2018 Summer Season also includes three Shakespeare playsMacbeth, As You Like It and Love’s Labor’s Lost, as well as Creditors by August Strindberg, adapted by David Greig; Mothers and Sons by Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally; and HIR by Pulitzer Prize finalist Taylor Mac.
AT A GLANCE
Production: Heisenberg
Playwright: Simon Stephens
Director: Tina Packer
Assistant to the Director: Taylor Tranfaglia
Set Designer: Juliana von Haubrich
Lighting Designer: Dan Kotlowitz
Costume Designer: Charlotte Palmer-Lane
Sound Designer: Amy Altadonna
Stage Manager: Hope Rose Kelly
CAST MEMBERS
Tamara Hickey (Georgie)
Malcolm Ingram (Alex)
SCHEDULE
AUGUST
Saturday, August 11 – 8:00 PM (preview)
Sunday, August 12 – 8:00 PM (preview)
Wednesday, August 15 – 8:00 PM (preview)
Thursday, August 16 – 8:00 PM (preview)
Friday, August 17 – 8:00 PM (opening)
Saturday, August 18 – 8:00 PM
Sunday, August 19 – 8:00 PM
Wednesday, August 22 – 8:00 PM
Thursday, August 23 – 2:00 PM
Friday, August 24 – 8:00 PM
Saturday, August 25 – 8:00 PM
Sunday, August 26 – 2:00 PM
Wednesday, August 29 – 8:00 PM
Thursday, August 30 – 2:00 PM
Friday, August 31 – 2:00 PM
SEPTEMBER
Saturday, September 1 – 8:00 PM
Sunday, September 2 – 8:00 PM (closing)
About Tina Packer
(Founding Artistic Director; Director, Heisenberg), She has directed all of Shakespeare’s plays (some of them several times), acted in eight of them (never when directing) and taught the whole canon at over thirty colleges, including Harvard, M.I.T. and NYU. At Columbia, she taught in the M.B.A. program for four years, resulting in the publication of Power Plays: Shakespeare’s Lessons in Leadership and Management with Deming Professor John Whitney for Simon and Schuster. For Scholastic, she wrote Tales from Shakespeare, a children’s book and recipient of the Parent’s Gold Medal Award. Most recently Tina’s book Women of Will was published by Knopf and she has been performingWomen of Will with Nigel Gore in New York, Mexico, England, The Hague, China, and across the US. Acting credits include: Shirley Valentine, Molly Ivins, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Mother of the Maid, and Volumnia in Coriolanus. She’s the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, including the Commonwealth Award.
About Simon Stephens
(Playwright, Heisenberg) Simon Stephens’ plays have been translated into more than thirty languages and performed throughout the world for two decades. He has won many awards including two Olivier Awards and a Tony Award for Best New Play. He is an Artistic Associate at the Lyric Hammersmith and Associate Playwright at the Royal Court Theatre. He is a professor of Scriptwriting at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Fellow of Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
About Shakespeare & Company
Located in the beautiful Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, Shakespeare & Company is one of the leading Shakespeare festivals of the world. Founded in 1978, the organization attracts over 40,000 patrons annually. The Company is also home to an internationally renowned Center for Actor Training and award-winning Education Program. More information is available at www.shakespeare.org.
Photos: Heisenberg