A note from your Director:
The Lion in Winter is one of my favorite plays. It takes major characters from European history and puts them together in a modern style theatrical setting. On stage, these kings, queens, princes, and princesses become real people with thoughts, feelings, hopes, and dreams. We watch them live and fight for what they want and what they think is right, sometimes only to be defeated. Their stories remind us of who we are and where we came from.
Often, when we study history, we find it to be a quagmire of faceless names and timeless dates. We have trouble putting historical information in time sequence in our minds and we have trouble concieving of people long passed as actual human beings. With his comedic drama, James Goldman brings life to one small corner of history, a place and time where the future, our future, hung in the balance.
As you watch The Lion in Winter tonight, think about the personal details of these characters from history. How can we use this experience to better understand other historical events? How does this change our percecption of the heroes and villians in history? For me, the heroes suddently seem a little less heroic, the villiams suddenly seem a little less villianous, and everyone becomes a bit more human.
Enjoy the show!
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