From Jealousy to Redemption: A Preview of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale in Modern Verse Translation

Director and Translator Tracy Young is a theatre director and playwright who has had a history working with Shakespeare productions, including translations. She recalls that her most challenging and joyful work to date is Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella (with co-adaptor Bill Rauch), a simultaneous telling of Euripides’ Medea, Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Earlier forays into Shakespearean translation include productions of The Taming of the Shrew and The Merry Wives of Windsor at Idaho Shakespeare Festival.

Los Angeles’ Skylight Theatre Company premieres Young’s latest production, The Winter’s Tale, the first LA production of a Play On Shakespeare translation. Experience William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale as never before, in a spirited 90-minute music-infused retelling of a story about love, loss, and rebirth. 

Opening April 24 and running through June 14, the story tells of the wrath of Leontes, a tyrannical king who rages over a cowed population as he places himself and his delusions above the law of Apollo. Death and terror reign until a Princess, Perdita, played by Misha Osherovich, raises their power to bring healing to the tortured land. 

Osherovich (they/she) is a queer actor and writer. After conquering SXSW with the critically acclaimed premiere of SHE’S THE HE, Osherovich has taken on Shakespeare in the non-traditional casting and non-traditional interpretation of The Winter’s Tale. This is a rare opportunity for Osherovich, who, as Perdita, plays one of the heroines, making this a landmark moment. Even though the playwright was known for gender fluid roles and casting in his day, contemporary Shakespeare productions have limited representation of trans characters. However, there is a growing trend of including trans actors in roles, both those explicitly trans and those that may explore gender roles or identities in a broader sense. 

The role of the tyrant King Leontes (Daniel DeYoung), immersed in his own fear, jealousy, and oppressive ways, is palpable. A figure whose emotions are out of control, DeYoung is very good at being very bad as he evokes both repugnance and pity. But The Winter’s Tale is a love story, and the amorous couple’s connection between Perdita (Osherovich) and Florizel (Israel Erron Ford) is delightful. Alongside a modern score, their harmonies are a highlight of this presentation. Altogether, this is a wonderful, hardy cast.

This production is the first collaboration between Skylight Theatre Company and Play On Shakespeare, a non-profit organization that began as part of Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s initiative to examine plays through the lens of the English we speak today, which was launched in 2015 under Bill Rauch. Skylight Theatre Company’s accessible, modern English translation is adapted by Lisa Wolpe and Tracy Young, and directed by Young, whose award-winning work has been seen in productions at Actor’s Gang, Cornerstone Theater Company, and the celebrated Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Play On translations aim to follow the same rigor and pressure as the original play, which means honoring the meter, rhyme, rhetoric, image, metaphor, character, action and theme. The work must be structured in iambic pentameter — a poetic rhythm characterized by lines containing five iambs (unstressed, stressed syllables), totaling ten syllables per line, creating a heartbeat-like cadence. Within this context, productions of the translations can still go through the same creative process that all classics go through: the director’s vision and creative interpretation. 

The Winter’s Tale is also a story of hope and forgiveness. As Paulina, the witch, declares as the dead return to life, “It is required you do awake your faith!” 

Skylight embraces the tenets of Play On Shakespeare and is proud to introduce this important non-profit organization to LA audiences.

“I was first drawn by Play On Shakespeare’s commitment to commissioning dozens of contemporary playwrights and translations made by playwrights who embodied many different lived experiences and share a deep love and curiosity about language,” said Armando Huipe, Skylight’s executive director. “They were all tasked with matching Shakespeare’s linguistic rigor as they approach the text and structure in order to make Shakespeare’s plays engaging and accessible to today’s audiences.”

“Right now, the picture is bleak, and it’s growing bleaker every day. The Winter’s Tale offers up a story where people find hope, forgiveness, and music in the face of tyranny. It reminds us how things that die in the winter are reborn in the spring,” said Gary Grossman, Skylight’s producing artistic director.

Skylight is recognized as an innovator of new play development among theater publications, including Dramatist Magazine. In just the last five years, three plays originating at Skylight have been performed Off Broadway and on Broadway: The Wrong Man and Church & State (which had 65+ productions in 33 states), and Lavender Men (which received a staged reading at Circle in the Square).

The Winter’s Tale 
Time: 8:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, and 8 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays (Schedule changes in May).

Cost: $20 to $42 

Details: 213-761-7061; https://www.skylighttheatre.org/thewinterstale

Venue: Skylight Theatre,1816 1/2 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles