Since we announced the performance release date for Shakespeare in Yosemite earlier this week, this felt like the perfect timing to present our interview with the directors of Imogen in the Wild: Dr. Katherine Steele Brokaw and Dr. Paul Prescott. Read on for more background behind the production, the company, and the rich cultural and ecological setting in which both have grown. 

Cymbeline in the Anthropocene is pleased to announce our second round of Cymbeline performance: Shakespeare in Yosemite's adaptation Imogen in the Wild will be released on April 22nd, on Earth Day. Imogen in the Wild will be the second production from our collaborators this April, closely coinciding with Rob Conkie and La Trobe University Theatre's Cymbeline, which runs between April 21-24 in Melbourne, Australia.

After announcing earlier this winter that Cymbeline in the Anthropocene would be joined by Dr. Mónica Maffía's Setebos company in Argentina, we are now delighted to announce another new collaborator: please join us in welcoming Western Summer Shakespeare of London, Ontario, Canada, who join us under the leadership of Dr. Joanna Devereux, a professor at the University of Western Ontario.

Cymbeline in the Anthropocene is thrilled to announce the first series of performances from our collaborating theatres. The open-air, Australian Cymbeline is a co-production of La Trobe University Student Theatre & Film and director Rob Conkie, and will run in Melbourne between March 24-27th, 2021, as part of LaTrobe’s MOAT Festival.

In Fall 2020, the English Senior Capstone course at UC Merced, led by Dr. Katherine Steele Brokaw, spent the semester researching Shakespeare and Ecology. Students read the work of several ecocritics and environmental activists, as well as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Lear, and Cymbeline. The students developed their own research projects, and also did collaborative research projects related to an eco-adaptation of Cymbeline, in anticipation of Shakespeare in Yosemite’s Spring 2021 production of the play.

With the new year underway, many of our collaborating theatre companies have begun rehearsing Cymbeline—if perhaps under more unusual circumstances than usual. As the covid-19 crisis continues to change how theatre makers are able to share their craft, many of our Cymbeline in the Anthropocene collaborators are adapting new ways to reach their audiences.

We are delighted to announce that internationally distinguished Argentinian playwright, translator, actor, and opera and theatre director Mónica Maffía will be joining Cymbeline in the Anthropocene. Dr. Maffía will create a new translation of Cymbeline in Castilian Spanish, which will be performed by her Buenos Aires-based theatre company, Setebos.

Sharing Cymbeline, a community-sourced virtual project run by Shakespeare Link UK, has entered the action-packed, final half of Cymbeline. Submissions remain open for community performances of excerpts from the play's final act. In the videos below, directors of the Willow Globe Susanna Best and Philip Bowen (click here for our recent interview with Susanna and Philip!) recount the play's spectacular climax and denouement, giving potential community actors context for their performances.

Continuing our series of interviews with our collaborating directors, we turn to Susanna Best and Philip Bowen of the Willow Globe theatre, located in the Welsh countryside. Read on to find out how the Shakespeare Link UK company of this living, tree-grown theatre are adapting their theatre practice to the ongoing pandemic, along with some hints about their upcoming Cymbeline production!

In the second of our interviews with Cymbeline in the Anthropocene's collaborating directors, we spoke to Dunay Yespaev Amandykovich of the Stanislavsky Theatre in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Read below for a glimpse of how theatres in Kazakhstan are adapting to Covid-19 conditions, and keep an eye on this blog for more directors' interviews soon!