APRIL 4–6, 2024
DAVID GEFFEN SCHOOL OF DRAMA AT YALE
James Bundy, Elizabeth Parker Ware Dean
Florie Seery, Associate Dean
Chantal Rodriguez, Associate Dean
Carla L. Jackson, Assistant Dean
Nancy Yao, Assistant Dean
PRESENTS
By Christopher Bayes and The Company
Based on the writings of Angelo Beolco
Adapted by Christopher Bayes and Steven Epp
Directed by Christopher Bayes
Creative Team
Co-Adaptor
Steven Epp
Music Director
Michael VQ
Lighting Designer
Kyle Stamm
Production Dramaturg
Daria Kerschenbaum
Stage Manager
Colleen Rooney Company in alphabetical order
Samuel Douglas
Giovanna Drummond
Karl Green
Malik James
Caro Reyes Rivera
Content Guidance
This production includes flashing lights and discussions of sexual violence.
Ruzante is performed without an intermission.
This production is supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.
Production
Associate Safety Advisor
Timothy “TJ” Wildow
Associate Production Manager
Shannon Dodson
Run Crew
Tricie Bergman, ML Roberts
Administration
Associate Managing Director
Jake Hurwitz
Assistant Managing Director
Jeremy Landes
Management Assistant
Mithra Seyedi
House Manager
Maura Bozeman
Production Photographer
Maza Rey
David Geffen School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year.
Sneha Sakhare, Annie Piper, E., Cosmo, Paulo, Roberta, Gabriella, Adina, Zela, Angell G, “The Country Club,” Maria and Lucy Rivera
Yale acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.
We also acknowledge the legacy of slavery in our region and the enslaved African people whose labor was exploited for generations to help establish the business of Yale University as well as the economy of Connecticut and the United States.
The Studio Productions are designed to be learning experiences that complement classroom work, providing a medium for students at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale to combine their individual talents and energies toward the staging of collaboratively created works. Your attendance meaningfully completes this process.
THE BENJAMIN MORDECAI
III PRODUCTION FUND, established by a graduate of the School, honors the memory of the Tony Awardwinning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982–1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Program from 1993 until his death in 2005.
Ruzante is the product of a decades-long collaboration between Christopher Bayes and Steven Epp (actor, writer, and co-Artistic Director of The Moving Company). The piece is inspired by the works of Angelo Beolco (1502–1542), an early-16th-century writer-performerdirector whose work predates both commedia dell’arte and William Shakespeare by several decades. Beolco’s work is formally notable for several reasons, particularly his inventive use of nonsense language (grammelot), his refusal to stay within the narrow confines of genre, and his love for all things obscene.
In rehearsals, what really captured the company’s imagination was the continued political resonances of Beolco’s plays. Dario Fo, the late, distinguished commedia practitioner, described Beolco in his 1997 Nobel Prize Lecture as “despised for bringing onto the stage the everyday life, joys and desperation of the common people; the hypocrisy and the arrogance of the high and mighty; and the incessant injustice…in telling these things, [he] made people laugh.” Beolco was one of the first playwrights of this time in Europe to depict the peasant underclass as complex, sympathetic characters. This was due in part to witnessing the devastation of the Italian Wars (1494–1559) and how they disproportionately harmed the rural poor. Beolco’s play, Parlamento de Ruzante or “The Veteran,” most directly reckons with the lingering effects of these conflicts and serves as a major influence for Bayes and Epp.
Ruzante is a comedy about a community of people dispossessed of their homelands and forced to resort to whatever means necessary to survive. The play oscillates between profuse silliness—sex jokes, shit jokes, and pop culture references abound—and profound tragedy. The music of Ruzante also encapsulates a wide variety of styles; alumnus Michael VQ’s (Directing ’11) delightful melange of cabaret ballads, drinking songs, and punk jams are interspersed throughout, allowing characters to express feelings too great for text alone. Are we meant to laugh? To cry? To recoil in disgust? Yes, yes, and yes, sometimes at the same time.
It’s not difficult to see parallels between the titular Ruzante, expelled from his native Padua and left to withstand unimaginable violence, and our world today. The ongoing genocide in Gaza is just one pressing example, with over 1.5 million Gazans internally displaced (United Nations) and over 32,000 killed as a result of Israel’s attacks (Al Jazeera). How are we meant to go on living in the face of such catastrophic devastation—perpetuated by our own U.S. government? How do we continue fighting for justice? Beolco does not offer any easy answers. But perhaps in laughter, we may find the strength to endure.
—Daria Kerschenbaum, Production Dramaturg