About Rough Crossing

• a note from the artistic director
• Found in Translation: Ferenc MolnÁr and Tom Stoppard
• DIRE STRAITS: 1930s IMPRESARIOS ON THE BRINK
• CASTLES ON THE SEA: LUXURY OCEAN LINERS OF THE 1930s
• STOPPARD'S SCREWBALLS
• Not-so-Private (Backstage) Lives
  (on the Silver Screen)

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a note from the artistic director

 

I am delighted to welcome you to Yale Rep's production of Rough Crossing by Tom Stoppard!

Rough Crossing is a daft shipboard romance about the stormy creation of a musical comedy. It is set in a period of economic crisis in our country's history when escapist entertainment was at a premium, and written with winking affection for one of the great comic writers of the last century, by one of the great playwrights writing in English today.

At the helm of this joyous voyage is director Mark Rucker, who knows a thing or two about keeping an unsteady ship on course. In 2006, he took the helm of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well (one of eight shows he has directed here at the Rep since 1995) when open heart surgery landed me in the hospital for an extended stay.

There’s a story one of the actors in that cast loves to tell about Mark’s arrival in the fourth week of rehearsal, just two weeks before an audience was to see the show. He began by watching the company work through the play in its entirety for the very first time—an event known colloquially in the theatre as a “stumble through,” because it’s almost always long, rough, and frustrating. This one was no exception. At the end of the rehearsal, the understandably tired and shell-shocked company looked fearfully at their new director: “Well,” he said, “that’s the best first rehearsal I’ve ever seen!”

When the news is bleak, as it is so often these days, you turn to someone with a buoyant personality like Mark. It helps if you can also go out and land a few comedians and singers and dancers, and I’m devoted to this remarkable company of actors for their fearless invention. In hard times, laughter is precious. As theatre artists learned nearly eighty years ago during the Great Depression, we can care deeply about an economic crisis and people in distress around the globe—and still take pleasure in, even require, the joyful triumph of truth and irrationality in a play.

Thank you for joining our cruise on the SS Italian Castle. We look forward to seeing you again in 2009!

Sincerely,

James Bundy
Artistic Director