The Winter's Tale

I interviewed Ms. Katrina Hall of Philadelphia, PA. She is an actor, director, and playwright. She is Phoenix Theatre's 2021 Virtual Artist in Residence.Listen in as we discuss the production and the surrounding themes such as forgiveness, relationship, and how religion can sometimes influence us good or bad.Get tickets here: http://www.thephoenixtheatrepa.com./The play runs from Friday February 19-21st virtually!!In Hall's adaptation of William Shakespeare's, The Winter's Tale, abandonment, loss, jealousy, and redemption all play out in their Time, across the lands of Sicilia and Bohemia. The jealous King Leontes falsely accuses his wife Hermione of infidelity with his best friend, and she dies. Leontes exiles his newborn daughter Perdita. With time at the center of this story, audiences pick back up in the story 16 years later, where audiences meet Leontes’ now grown daughter, who was raised by shepherds in her exile and falls in love with the son of Leontes’ former best friend. In Hall’s adaptation, Bohemia becomes a carnival. “It was the play's overall oddness that initially drew me in,” said Hall about adapting this work. “The way some of the turns were just so quick and outsized in ways you don't typically see even from Shakespeare. It also inherently struck me as a woman's play, which I am generally oriented toward. The challenge of centering that aspect of it really appealed to me.” She adds, “Among other things, The Winter's Tale is about jealousy. The way it is insidious in that it makes you believe you have clarity of vision, while the exact opposite is true. The longer it is maintained, the more progressively opaque your sight becomes. Here, in the King of Sicily's case, to tragically deadly results. For me, it is also about not only forgiveness, but what, if any, are its limits.Enjoy the interview. I will also review the show on the blog https://www.toitime.org