Crescent Theatre Blog

One of the best things about directing a play is researching who wrote the play and why, especially if it’s a period piece like Mary Stuart. Mary Stuart, better known as Mary Queen of Scots in this country, was descended from the first Tudor king, Henry VII, and Schiller’s play revolves around hers and Elizabeth I’s competing claims to the English throne. Considering they occupied such a short period in history the Tudors still exert a surprising hold on the popular imagination and last weekend I found myself reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and watching David Starkey’s TV documentary Elizabeth so I’m not short of research material.

Schiller was an 18th century German republican so he had his own take on the 16th century English monarchy. It’s no coincidence that the French Revolution ended in 1799 the year before Mary Stuart opened in Germany; for Schiller, the story of Mary and Elizabeth is a parable about the corrupting influence of power which he witnessed in the French Reign Of Terror and to do justice to his original intentions I want our 2010 production to look for equivalent contemporary political parallels.

So with the production still three months away I’m juggling three separate timelines in my head; the 16th century English monarchy, 18th century European republicanism and 21st century abuses of power. I think some kind of a show is starting to emerge out of all that but in the end the cast will determine most of what the audience sees so the next milestone will be the auditions.