Baker Shakespeare Theatre
  at Rice University

Current Production: The Winter's Tale

“Exit, pursued by a bear” is all that many know of The Winter's Tale: perhaps the most infamous stage direction in all of Shakespeare's works. Yet the simultaneous tragedy and comedy of that brief sentence offers a reasonable summary of the play as a whole.

The Winter's Tale is one of Shakespeare's later plays, and shares many features with its contemporary, The Tempest. In these later “romances,” Shakespeare rejected the rigid structures of comedy and tragedy in favor of more varied and adventurous tales.

“Romance” refers not to love (though that happens, too), but to the “Roman” period of many of these plays: a time of ancient heroes, mysterious magic, and perilous escapes. In fact, The Winter's Tale may best be understood as Shakespeare's equivalent to the resurgence in fairy tales seen in our modern media, with television programs like Grimm or Once Upon a Time, or upcoming movies like Snow White and the Huntsman or Mirror, Mirror.

What happens is not entirely comic or tragic, but a mixture of both, leading to an exciting finale. The stage is littered with neither dead bodies nor married couples at play's end; but a broken universe has been made whole, through great time and effort by its inhabitants.

Like many productions at Baker College, The Winter's Tale  uses a bridge or traverse stage; a central performing space with audience on two sides, visible to each other over the playing area.  The closeness of audience and actors is an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of Shakespeare's own day, when the Globe Theatre stage projected far out into a crowd surrounding it on three sides.

Baker Shakespeare Theater's 2012 production of The Winter's Tale shows a different side of the annual festival than last year's Hamlet: a willingness to explore the obscure parts of the canon as well as its highlights. Since its founding in 1970, the festival has brought Shakespeare's comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances to life for Rice University audiences as well as the larger Houston community.

The cast ranges from freshmen to seniors, in majors ranging from English to engineering, from all across the country and the world.  There's even a cameo by Baker College's faculty master, a professor of viola at the Shepherd School of Music.   Most of the undergraduates are not drama majors: as is usual with the festival, it's an opportunity for students at one of Houston's most challenging universities to add yet another experience to their varied educations: six weeks auditioning, rehearsing, and performing one of Shakespeare's classic plays, with a cast and crew of talented amateurs.

With this production, Joseph “Chepe” Lockett celebrates his twenty-fifth consecutive year with the festival, and his seventh appearance as director. Since his first appearance in 1988's The Taming of the Shrew as a Rice sophomore, Lockett has participated in each year's show, first as an undergraduate and then as an alumnus, twice receiving Baker Residential College's Special Service Award.  Roles have ranged from Banquo and the Doctor in two different Macbeth productions, to Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing, to the title role in Richard III.  Directing credits for Baker Shakespeare include The Winter's Tale (1997 and 2012), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999), King Lear (2003), The Taming of the Shrew (2005), Cymbeline (2006), and The Tempest (2009).

Publicity Materials

• Facebook event (invite your friends!).
• Flyers for use on campus and off campus.
• Trifold for tables.

More to come.

What is BakerShake?

Since the premiere season in 1970, Rice University’s Baker Residential College has hosted the oldest continuous Shakespeare festival in Houston, bringing these classic plays to both the undergraduate population and wider Houston audiences.

Actors from across Rice University—students past and present, staff, and faculty—endeavor to present a lively, intimate, and high-quality performance. Six weeks of rehearsal give the undergraduate actors the chance to deeply inhabit Shakespeare's work and words, and Baker College Commons, originally the university-wide dining hall in the early 1900s, provides a stately space within which to perform. The space lends itself to fast entrances and exits and frequent interaction with the audience, thus recreating the experience of Shakespeare's own day.

Origins of Baker Shakespeare

Baker Shakespeare began in 1970, guided by college master Charles W. Philpott and inspired by two engineering students, Charles Becker and Ed Dickinson, who wanted to see Shakespeare at Baker. The college Commons, originally the Rice Institute's central dining hall, has since provided a visually exciting backdrop for over forty years of productions, ranging among comedies, tragedies, histories, and romances in settings lavish or minimalist, from ancient to modern.

Students choose a short list of plays in late fall, excluding those performed within the last ten years, then interview and select a director based on proposals. Past directors have included faculty members, alumni, and current students, as well as professional directors from Houston, Bulgaria, and England. Auditions in December or January allow six weeks or more of rehearsal before opening night.

Actors and crew come from any of the eleven residential colleges; students design and run almost all technical aspects (set, lights, costumes, etc.) of the show. Events such as the Shakespeare Faire and a Feast for Baker and Jones seniors also add to the drama, pageantry, and excitement of the Baker Shakespeare tradition.