Shakespeare & Company 2022 Season Playbill

A WALK IN THE WOODS

By Lee Blessing

Directed by James Warwick

with Allyn Burrows and Jonathan Epstein

Two superpower arms negotiators, a Russian and an American, meet informally in the pleasant woods on the outskirts of Geneva. The Russian, Botvinnik, is urbane and humorous but also seasoned and cynical. His American counterpart, Honeyman, is inquisitive and

determined, fervently hopeful about what can—and must—be achieved to maintain peace. They continue their informal meetings as the seasons change, and through these conversations, develop a friendship that belies the antagonisms of the world order.

DIRECTOR’S TAKE

In February of this year, I got an intriguing email from Allyn Burrows. He said he’d just had a crazy idea. Would I direct him and Jonny Epstein in a contemporary play for the Roman Garden Theatre, and would I read A Walk in the Woods by Lee Blessing?

It was also the month when diplomacy and negotiation were being explored to avert, as we now know, what was to become the last gasp of humanity before the outbreak of war in Ukraine – a horrific display of the evil of which the human race is capable. I thought I would never live to see such atrocity again in my lifetime; my parents both fought in World War II. My father was a captain in the British Army, and my mother drove ambulances in London during the Blitz.

They were both still teenagers. They hardly ever talked about it when we were growing up, but I can see in retrospect that they were both deeply, emotionally scarred for the rest of their lives.

I was still a teenager in London when the war in Vietnam started, and although too young to fully understand, the photographic images and descriptions of that conflict are indelibly etched in my mind.

A Walk in the Woods is about two human beings and their professional lives as international diplomats. One Russian, one American. Two negotiators, from opposite sides of the political world, meeting in a wood outside Geneva to address the complex issue

of arms control. Lee Blessing wrote his play in 1988 in the middle of the Cold War. With his extraordinary ear for conversational dialogue around global issues, the two protagonists discuss the urgency of a peaceful agreement between East and West.

As I read the play for the first time back in February, I realized how timeless it has become. I write this director’s note as we all watch the horrors that occur when diplomacy fails, democracy is under attack, and autocracy demands control over the fragile balance of power. With eerily prophetic vision, Lee Blessing invites us to go on a thought-provoking journey of extraordinary insight, compassion, and surprising humor. By the time you see this play, and certainly by the end of our run in September, I pray that a ceasefire will be negotiated, healing can begin, and human decency restored.

So, in response to Allyn’s email after reading the play, I answered with a resounding…Yes. I’d worked with Jonathan Epstein on The Children at Shakespeare & Company a couple of years ago, and have watched Allyn’s consummate acting skills over many years. I have a profound respect for these - my colleagues - at the top of their craft. Coupled with an outstanding set designer, Devon Drohan, and a terrific production team, I wish us all peace, health, education and equal rights in the years ahead.

With love.— James Warwick