2018 Classics in Context 

Twelfth Night July 6 at 5:30 p.m.
“I am not what I am:” Gender and Desire in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night
Megan Cook, Assistant Professor of English, Colby College
Megan Cook teaches medieval literature, with an emphasis on Chaucer and other late medieval poets, and researches and writes about the fate of Middle English texts and books in the early modern period. Her current book project examines the scholarly reception of Chaucer’s works in sixteenth-century England, with special emphasis on the role of antiquarians in the production of early printed editions.

Kristin Clippard, Director, Twelfth Night
Kristin has worked as an actor, director, educator, playwright, producer, dramaturg, and administrator since graduating from the University of Iowa with an MFA in Directing. Her focus is staging new voices and re-mixing the classics. She was recently producer in residence at Orlando Shakespeare Theatre in a partnership with the New Play Development Network coordinating Playfest and the NNPN showcase of new plays. Recent directing credits include: Merry Wives of Windsor (Richmond Shakespeare), God of Carnage (Incline Theatre), Macbeth (Cincinnati Shakespeare), The Imaginary Invalid and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Annapolis Shakespeare), among others.

Richard III July 13 at 5:30 p.m.
Curses, Prophecies, & Laments: the Female Voice in Shakespeare’s Richard III
Caroline Bicks, Professor of English and Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, University of Maine, Orono
Caroline Bicks recently joined the department of English at the University of Maine as the inaugural Stephen E. King Chair of Literature. An associate professor of English at Boston College since 2002, she taught courses in early modern literature and culture. In addition to Shakespeare, Bicks’ other areas of specialization include women and gender in early modern literature and culture, early modern drama, the history of science, and girlhood studies. Bicks’ humorous life-writing has appeared in the “Modern Love” column of the New York Times, on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and in the show and book “Afterbirth: Stories You Won’t Read in a Parenting Magazine.” Most recently, she co-authored an irreverent Bard-meets-life cocktail book, “Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas.”

Dawn McAndrews, Director, Richard III
Dawn has worked as a producer, educator, and artistic director at theatres across the country including Shakespeare Theatre Company, Steppenwolf Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Arena Stage, Portland Stage Company, and Shakespeare Festival St. Louis. Directing credits include: The Pajama Game (UMO), Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Colby), The Language Archive (Public Theatre); Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Winter’s Tale, Romeo and Juliet, The Mousetrap, Henry IV Part 1, Of Thee I Sing (TAM); The Glass Menagerie; Holiday, and Three Days of Rain (1st Stage); Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Antigone, as well as adapting and directing A Christmas Carol at Portland Stage.

Enchanted April July 20 at 5:30 p.m.
Magical Communities: Remaking Female Bonds in Matthew Barber’s Enchanted April
Mazie Hough, Associate Professor of History and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of Maine at Orono
Mazie Hough is an early twentieth century American Social Historian with a focus on women’s history. Her work has included research on women and reform, legal history, social activism, and Maine women’s history. Mazie teaches Introduction to Women’s Studies, Women’s Studies Methodology, Womanhood in America, Women and Globalization, and is also co-teaching with Carol Toner, coordinator of the Maine Studies Program and Research Associate and Assistant Professor in History, a series of courses on Women and War. 

Kate Bergstrom, Director, Enchanted April
Kate is Artistic Director of On the Verge Summer Repertory Company in Santa Barbara, California, has worked as director, devisor, producer and educator in theatres, companies and schools throughout the west coast including UCLA, Redcata, Highways Performance Space, La Mirada Center for the Performing Arts, and more. She recently completed her MFA in directing at Brown/Trinity Rep. Directing credits include: The Children’s Hour (Granoff Center for the Arts), The Taming of the Shrew, Map of Virtue, and Neva (Brown/Trinity), Footprints at Laetoli & Caylee’s First Big Show! (OTV 2015), These Walls (OTV 2016), Woyeck (UCLA), and Wholed (Redcat 2013).

Dial “M” for Murder July 27 at 5:30 p.m.
Femininity in a Hypermasculine World: Frederick Knott’s Dial “M” for Murder
David Pierson, Professor of Media Studies, University of Southern Maine
David Pierson teaches media and film theory courses as well as video production, writing, and film directing for the Communication and Media Studies Department. Pierson has served as Director of Media Studies and also as Chair of Communication and Media Studies since 2014. David’s current research interests are the rhetorical, discursive, and aesthetic dimensions of broadcast and cable television programming. He is also interested in television’s representation of history. He has published and presented research on such television programs and series as Breaking Bad, Combat!, C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation, Discovery Channel’s nature and science programming, The Fugitive, Mad Men, Seinfeld, and Turner Network Television’s made-for-TV westerns.

Sally Wood, Director, Dial “M” for Murder
Sally Wood, The Learned Ladies Director is a professional director, actor, and fight choreographer. Sally has directed for Portland Stage Company, Theater at Monmouth, AIRE, and Fenix Theater Company, where she is also a founding member. In addition to an active career as a director, she has choreographed fights for more than 20 productions. Sally spent ten years as a company member at TAM, including six as Artistic Director. Recently, Sally had the great pleasure of working with living, breathing playwrights, directing four world premieres in the last five years.

Project Scholar and Moderator: Benjamin Bertram, Professor of English,
University of Southern Maine

Benjamin Bertram’s areas of interest include sixteenth and seventeenth-century English literature and culture, Shakespeare, early modern studies, ecocriticism, animal studies, film studies, and critical theory. He currently working on a book on war and ecology in early modern England that will be published by Routledge Press in 2017. His most recent articles are “Webster’s Geometry” (English Literature 1, 2014), “Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and the Discourse of Husbandry” (Modern Philology 110:4, 2013) and “Falstaff’s Body, the Body Politic, and the Body of Trade” (Exemplaria 21:3, 2009). His first book, The Time is Out of Joint: Skepticism in Shakespeare’s England, appeared in 2004. He has also published essays on postmodernism and politics.

Read “A Lesson in Gardening: Theater at Monmouth’s Year of the Woman” by Ben Bertram