‘Shakespeare in Love’ ends longtime director’s high school career

“My relationship with the theater began as a child and at 67, I am not willing to accept that it is over, but will simply transition into something else performance-related,” she said in the play’s director’s notes. “How will this end? Who knows. It’s a mystery.”

Harry said that the play centers around a young Will Shakespeare struggling to find inspiration and employs many of the plot devices commonly found in Elizabethan-age productions — like “cross dressing disguises, mistaken identities, suspicious of adultery, sword fighting, a comedic nurse and even visions of ghosts are all present, as is the enduring ‘play within a play’ convention that Shakespeare fondly adopted for many of his works,” she said.

And maybe more importantly, it’s a play about how the crazy process of a production somehow, against the odds, turns out just fine.

“I learned at a very early age to simply trust the process, that somehow the show will turn out well,” she said. “That leap of faith I see in my actors as well as myself is what makes all this hard work worth it.

“The rehearsals lost to snowstorms led to the feeling we as directors always have, that if we had just one more week, all would be well,” she added. “But somehow we arrive at opening night with everyone and everything ready to go.”

Harry has directed numerous Shakespeare plays over her years as a teacher and this one brings it all back.

“I find many a connection with a play I directed 10, 20 or 30 years ago to a line spoken in this play,” she said. “It brings my high school directing career full circle in a very satisfying way.”

The production is based on the screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard and adapted for the stage by Lee Hall.