The Faithful Shepherdess
Coming: November 21-23, 2024 (Columbus Performing Arts Center)
image credit: William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 'The Shepherdess' (1889)
John Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess
Though he is largely unknown to audiences today, John Fletcher was one of the most popular and successful playwrights of the English Renaissance. He took over from Shakespeare as the principal playwright of the King’s Men playing company, jointly writing three plays with Shakespeare at the end of the latter’s career between 1610-1612. The Faithful Shepherdess is among Fletcher’s earliest work, and it displays Fletcher’s close study of Shakespeare’s comedies and romances, particularly the characterization and setting of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Fletcher’s dramaturgical style often involves exaggeration or amplification of another writer’s work; for example, whereas Dream has two pairs of lovers lost at night in the woods, Fletcher’s Faithful Shepherdess has four, and whereas Dream offers the magical figures of diminutive English fairies, Fletcher supplies robust satyrs and river gods.
The Faithful Shepherdess, Lord Denney’s Players’ twelfth production, offers Columbus audiences a lively, absurd expansion of the Shakespearean tropes they know and love, such as young people’s obsessive sexuality and feeling (seen also in Romeo and Juliet) and the peculiar deus ex machina of a late work like Cymbeline. The premiere example of Jacobean tragicomedy, the play balances on a knife edge between genres while also offering such a robust satire of puritanical values that one reader has called it “American Pie set in the seventeenth century.”
Show run: November 21-23, 2024 (3 shows total), All shows begin at 7:30pm; Columbus Performing Arts Center (549 Franklin Ave). There is no late seating!
Cast and Crew↓
CAST
- Perigot | Fé Beatty, freshman majoring in Music Performance/English.
Thenot | Ryan Heitkamp , Academic Advisor, Theatre.
- Satyr | Sam Hicks-Jirkans, junior majoring in Economics.
Clorin | Shanna Jaggars , Assistant Vice Provost, Research.
- Alexis | Josie Luck, sophomore in Psychology.
- Amoret | Caroline McCoy, junior majoring in Chemistry.
- Chloe | Analese Mitson, Senior majoring in English.
- Sullen Shepherd | Elizabeth Richmond, junior majoring in integrated Language Arts/English education.
- God of the River | Othman Shuri, Junior majoring in Theatre.
- Amaryllis | Lexi Strickland, senior in Political Science and Japanese.
- Old Shepherd | Olivia Szczesniak, sophomore majoring in Film Studies.
- Priest of Pan | Taylor Thompson, senior majoring in English and Psychology.
- Daphnis | Alex Yang, sophomore majoring in STEM Education
CAST
Director | Sarah Neville , Associate Professor of English and Theatre, Film and Media Arts.
Stage Manager | Tamara Mahadin ,PhD Candidate in English.
Assistant Director | Cat McMahan ,MFA Candidate in Creative Writing.
- Assistant Stage Manager | Jane Dimel, OSU alumna 2023 majoring in English.
- Assistant Stage Manager | Madison Stanley, junior majoring in English.
- Assistant Stage Manager | Stephanie Houser, senior majoring in Philosophy and English.
- Assistant Stage Manager | Ali Sebenoler, senior majoring in English and French.
Dramaturge | Elise Robbins , PhD Candidate in English.
- Costume Designer | Analese Mitson, senior majoring in English
Lighting Designer | Sarah Herkert , MFA Candidate in Theatre-Design.
Intimacy Coordinator | Aviva Neff , Assistant Professor of Theatre, Denison University.
- Poster Designer | Lane Grey, junior majoring in Communication and English.