Adapted from Henry V by William Shakespeare
New Feet Productions and Walkerspace
Into the Hazard (Henry 5) tells the story of a very young but promising leader who discovers the challenges and experience of war as a tool for consolidating his hold on power. With only six actors, there are no truly public events in the play. Rather, every negotiation is a back-room deal, exposing the realpolitik of how decisions get made. The media, represented through a variety of videos, provides the public face of those decisions, while revealing our limited attention span for serious engagement with difficult issues.
Shakespeare’s Henry V has famously been read as both pro and anti-war. It is, as James Shapiro observes, a “going-to-war play,” with all the contradictions that implies. I approached this adaptation wanting to keep both sides of the pro/anti-war argument compelling and let the audience come to their own conclusions. I wanted to investigate the role of the media in the stories we tell ourselves about war. I wanted to see how few people I could use to tell the story.
Actors: Nick Dillenburg, David McCann, Erin Moon, Luis Moreno, Trevor Vaughn, Scott Whitehurst.
Designers: Christopher Akerlind, Jeremy Lee, Emily Pepper, Austin Switser.
"…a thoughfully directed Henry V performed by six talented actors who deliver the sense of Shakespeare’s words in American cadences without losing their poetry…"
"Every now and then, you’ll find one of the rarer species of conceptualized classics: a production which develops its new take from the inside-out, investing as much care and energy into illuminating the text as it is (and not what the director wishes it was) as it does bringing the concept to life. Thankfully, Jessica Bauman’s Into the Hazard is just such a production. …one of the most entertaining and enjoyable classical productions I’ve seen in some time…"
-NYTheatre.com