Q&A with The Winter's Tale Director

In her first year with the Utah Shakespeare Festival, director Carolyn Howarth is taking on one of Shakespeare’s most underrated—and most beautiful—plays: The Winter’s Tale. And, though she’s new to the Festival, Howarth has a rich background in Shakespeare. She directed shows for 14 seasons at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, as well as at the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, and the Sierra Shakespeare Festival. Her productions have also appeared at Perseverance Theatre Company, Capital Stage, and Foothill Theatre Company, where she also served as the artistic director.

As an actor, Howarth has appeared onstage at Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, Jewish Theatre San Francisco, Maxim Gorky Theatre, and a number of regional theaters across the country.

Howarth received her BA and MFA from UC Davis, where she also worked as a professor. Her other teaching credits include the University of South Carolina, the University of Alabama, and Sierra College.

The Festival sat down with Howarth to learn more about her approach to The Winter’s Tale.

The Festival: Why were you excited to direct this play?

Howarth: I love this play. It was one of my first professional productions when I started as an actor. I thought about this play a lot. It’s a later Shakespeare play, which don’t come up a lot. It’s only the second time in my entire career that it’s crossed my path, so I was excited for that.

I was excited because it’s hard and complicated and it deals with messy humans that are trying to figure stuff out, and I find the form of the play and [the two worlds coming together] so fascinating. I was also excited to be at the Festival because it’s been on my bucket list for a long time.

The Festival: This play has a lot of dark themes, such as betrayal and jealousy. How did you balance these ideas with the lighter ones?

Howarth: You can’t shy away from dark moments in plays because then the moments of lightness don’t mean anything. This play is beautifully structured, because you have this world of jealousy, betrayal, and infidelity, and then you go to this idyllic world where they’re singing and dancing… and Shakespeare balances it all very nicely and takes those two worlds into the fifth act and combines them.

Even in the moments of darkness, there’s humor that’s often ironic and satiric. It’s those moments that [show us] how we behave as humans, whether for good or for bad. That allows us to laugh and to find that personal connection.

The Festival: You noted in a production design meeting that this is ultimately a play about faith. Can you expand more on that?

Howarth: There’s a myriad of themes in the play, including loyalty, family, Pagan and Christian… it’s so full of contrast. For me, though, it’s all leading to the ending moments of rebirth and resurrection and reunion. In order for those things to happen, the characters have to have hope and faith and believe in the reality of miracles.

Love is redefined as a miracle. Shakespeare’s audience really believed in the supernatural, in a way that we don’t as much contemporarily, and for them faith was “anything can happen in theatre and can represent anything.”

The Festival: As playgoers, what should we watch for that would help us enjoy/understand the play even more? Are there any special hidden surprises you’ve implemented in the show?

Howarth: There is an article of clothing that will keep reappearing throughout the play. There’s also a scenic element that will reappear in various places and surprise the audience. On a philosophical level, Shakespeare was pulling from a lot of sources, but there’s little things that crop up in our notion of “fairytales.” There’s a lot of fairytale moments littered throughout the play that are fun to look for.

It’s fun to look for the turns in the characters. The big one is Leontes and his many shifts. But some of the comic characters have shifts, too. It’s also fun to look at the characters that oppose one another. Who in Bohemia feels the same in Sicilia thematically?

The Festival: What challenges came with preparing to direct this play?

Howarth: Shakespeare wrote big plays. This one spans 16 years of time, and there’s always things you have to figure out how to solve. Modern day audiences look at these plays through a modern lens; so how do you stay true to Shakespeare but present these themes [for audiences today]? We keep doing Shakespeare’s plays because he managed to put so much humanity in his plays; he transcends time and [continues] to teach us lessons. We recognize human behavior in his plays.

The Festival: What do you hope audience members will take away from this play?

Howarth: I hope they leave with a feeling that we as humans need each other—now more than ever—for empathy, compassion, community, and friendship; and that that is possible. Grace is attainable through forgiveness, and I hope audience members leave feeling that possibility. You can always find a way to move past feelings of hatred.

There’s a lot of fun in this play too, and I hope people are entertained by those moments.

The Festival: How long have you been a director? What draws you to directing?

Howarth: I started acting in junior high and then did actor training and was working as a professional actor for years. I was primarily acting and directing [only] occasionally, but as I aged, the acting roles became fewer and farther between and it shifted. I’ve been directing for 28 years.

I love directing because I love puzzles. I’m addicted to crossword puzzles and sudoku, and directing for me is a puzzle, because it’s all about figuring out how those pieces fit together.

The other huge part of directing for me is being able to work with brilliant colleagues to create. It’s about the collaboration, and I’m in more of those worlds as a director than I was as an actor.

The Festival: Anything else you want Festival audiences to know?

Howarth: I would encourage people to not be afraid of these plays they haven’t heard of. I realize it’s not a Romeo and Juliet, but these lesser-known titles bring so much substance, and they’re such a delight. They’re so deep and thick and rich with drama and humor. It’s a gorgeous show.

Get your tickets to The Winter’s Tale, running now through September 6 in the Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre. Visit bard.org or call 800-PLAYTIX.