RemarkaBULL Podversations are informal, livestreamed conversations that investigate approaches to essential passages from the Shakespearean and Jacobean canon―and beyond.
Host Nathan Winkelstein will explore ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM with director Jesse Berger; playwrights Jeffrey Hatcher and Kathryn Walat; and scholar Tanya Pollard. Join us online for this free, interactive RemarkaBULL Podversation.
"Arden of Faversham is one of the English-speaking theater’s first true-crime stories. Darkly comic–with a shocking ending–it’s Macbeth meets Double Indemnity meets Fargo. And it features one of the strongest and most mercurial female protagonists in Elizabethan drama, whose wit and passions drive the action. This play has been on my ‘must-do’ list for years, and I’m thrilled to finally have an opportunity to tackle it, especially in a crackling new adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher and Kathryn Walat. Their work heightens the thrills, sharpens the laughs, and deepens the passions of the original, enlivening the ways in which this rarely-produced classic speaks – playfully and powerfully – to today’s audiences."
–JESSE BERGER | Founder & Artistic Director
Jesse Berger has directed Pericles, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Edward the Second, Women Beware Women, The Duchess of Malfi, The Witch of Edmonton, The Maids, Volpone, Loot, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, The Changeling, The Government Inspector and The Alchemist since founding Red Bull Theater in 2003. Jesse has also directed across the country at Denver Center (Richard III), The Old Globe (Othello), Pittsburgh Public Theatre (Venus in Fur, Circle Mirror Transformation, An Iliad, A Number, I Am My Own Wife, The Laramie Project), PlayMakers Rep (An Iliad), Barrington Stage (Absurd Person Singular, Sleuth), Great Lakes Theater Festival, Dorset Theatre Festival, Washington Shakespeare Company, and the Utah, Idaho, and St. Louis Shakespeare Festivals, among others. Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Direction (Marat/Sade), Drama League and Lucille Lortel Award nominations for Outstanding Revival (The Maids); SDC Callaway Award nominations for Excellence in Directing (The Government Inspector, The Witch of Edmonton, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore), OBIE Award for Outstanding Direction (The Government Inspector).
Tanya Pollard is professor of English at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and is Chair of the Council of Scholars at Theatre for a New Audience. Her books include Greek Tragic Women on Shakespearean Stages (2017), Drugs and Theater in Early Modern England (2005), Shakespeare’s Theater (2003), and four co-edited anthologies. She appeared in Shakespeare Uncovered with Ethan Hawke in Macbeth (2013) and with Christopher Plummer in King Lear (2015). Beyond the Red Bull and TFANA, she has spoken with artists and audiences at theaters including the Public, Classic Stage Company, and Roundabout, where she consulted on Kiss Me Kate (2019). A Rhodes Scholar, she has had NEH, Whiting, and Mellon fellowships. Her edition of The Alchemist is forthcoming with Arden Early Modern Drama.
Jeffrey Hatcher’s work was last presented by Red Bull Theater in 2021 with the acclaimed romp The Alchemist and in 2017 with his hit version of inane corruption à la Gogol, The Government Inspector. His Broadway credits include Never Gonna Dance (book). Off-Broadway credits include Three Viewings and A Picasso at Manhattan Theatre Club; Scotland Road and The Turn of the Screw at Primary Stages; Tuesdays with Morrie (with Mitch Albom) at the Minetta Lane; Murder by Poe, The Turn of the Screw, and The Spy at The Acting Company; and Neddy at American Place. Other credits include Compleat Female Stage Beauty, Mrs. Mannerly, Murderers, Mercy of a Storm, Smash, Korczak's Children, To Fool the Eye, Confederacy of Dunces, The Critic, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and others at The Guthrie, Old Globe, Yale Rep, The Geffen, Seattle Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Cleveland Playhouse, South Coast Rep, Arizona Theater Company, San Jose Rep, The Empty Space, Indiana Rep, Children’s Theater Company, History Theater, Madison Rep, Intiman, Illusion, Denver Center, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Milwaukee Rep, Repertory Theater of St. Louis, Actors Theater of Louisville, Philadelphia Theater Company, Huntington, Shakespeare Theatre (D.C.), Asolo, City Theater, Studio Arena and dozens more in the U.S. and abroad. Film and television credits include "Stage Beauty," "Casanova," "The Duchess," "Mr. Holmes," and episodes of “Columbo” and "The Mentalist." Grants/awards: NEA, TCG, Lila Wallace Fund, Rosenthal New Play Prize, Frankel Award, Charles MacArthur Fellowship Award, McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Barrymore Award Best New Play, and IVEY Award Best New Play. He is a member and/or alumnus of The Playwrights Center, the Dramatists Guild, the Writers Guild, and New Dramatists.
Kathryn Walat is a playwright and opera librettist. Her play Creation, developed at The O’Neill, premiered at the Theatre @ Boston Court and was nominated for a LA Stage Alliance Ovation Award for Playwriting. Her Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen premiered Off-Broadway at WP and was published in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2007. Her Bleeding Kansas premiered at the Hangar Theatre and received a Francesca Primus Citation (American Theatre Critics Association). Other plays include See Bat Fly (Kilroy’s List; Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep), Ancient Gods of the Backwoods (New Georges’ Germ Project), Know Dog (Salvage Vanguard), Johnny Hong Kong (Perishable Theatre), and On the Road (Actors’ Theatre of Louisville/Anthology Project). Her work as an opera librettist includes Paul’s Case (PROTOTYPE, Pittsburgh Opera) with composer Gregory Spears, named in New Yorker magazine’s Ten Notable Performances for 2014; its recording from National Sawdust Tracks was named in Opera News’ Five Best New Works of 2019. The Echo Drift was commissioned and produced by Beth Morrison Projects, HERE, and American Opera Projects, and premiered at PROTOTYPE Festival. She is an affiliated artist with New Georges and the Playwrights’ Center, and an associate professor and resident playwright at SUNY Albany. BA, Brown University; MFA, David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.
ABOUT THE HOST
Nathan Winkelstein has been the Associate Artistic Director with Red Bull Theater for five years. He is the Producing Director of The Revelation Reading Series as well as the host of RemarkaBull Podversations. He also serves as the casting associate for Red Bull. Dubbed 'The Pied Piper of Shakespeare' by world-renowned director Des McAnuff, Nathan has acted or directed for numerous companies around the country, including The Alley, NYU Grad, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Shakespeare Theater Company, LCT, The Folger, American Shakespeare Center, and others. He has taught for Red Bull, STC, LCT, TGS, and Maggie Flanagan Studio. Nathan received his BA in Theater from the University at Buffalo and his MFA in Classical Acting from the prestigious Bristol Old Vic Theatre School in the UK. Nathan is a proud member of Actors Equity.