Into the Woods

On behalf of the Theater Division and the entire Boston Conservatory at Berklee community, I am thrilled to welcome you to our final faculty-directed production of the 2022–2023 academic year, Into the Woods.

For many of us, composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (who died last year at 91) was both an artistic giant whose contributions to American musical theater are endless, and a familiar old friend whose words and music live vibrantly within our subconscious. So, too, exists the masterpiece you will see tonight, Into the Woods. The stories, based loosely on folk and fairy tales, are widely known all over the world. Yet, the music—the way in which the characters both describe the action of the play and reveal existential truths in real time—is the hallmark of a titan of the craft.

At the heart of everything we do at the Conservatory is the cultivation and celebration of our student artists. Year after year, the Theater Division is named one of the preeminent training programs in the country, and you are about to see why. This extraordinary cast, orchestra, and crew have applied the work in their classrooms, studios, and practice spaces to this production, under the meticulous direction and guidance of faculty member Bevin O’Gara. We have been honored to collaborate again with our brilliant Berklee College of Music colleague, music director and conductor Eric Stern, whose decades of experience on the Broadway and international stage is a gift to our community. And I would be remiss not to mention our designers and Performance Services staff, who work tirelessly to support, enhance, and enrich the hundreds of productions, recitals, and performances that are central to the Conservatory experience, across our divisions.

Now, please sit back and enjoy this gem of the American theater, which entertains us, provokes us, endears us, and reminds us—as only Sondheim could—that “nice is different than good.”

—Jermaine Hill, Interim Dean of Theater

My first encounter with Sondheim of any kind was Into the Woods, when I was a freshman in college. I was going through a dramatic breakup (the way you do in theater school), and I still remember that first time hearing the Princes’ rendition of “Agony” in act one. It was touching, moving, and utterly exhilarating. “Why doesn’t he love me like that?” I wanted to know. After watching act two, however—spoiler alert!—I was completely convinced [Name Redacted To Protect The Innocent] was the worst, and that I was way better off without him anyway. Years later, I saw a summer stock production that a friend of mine was working on, and this time, I was moved to tears by “It Takes Two,” for the opposite reasons. It was a beautiful reminder of all the reasons my marriage worked, at just the moment when I needed to hear it. And then, when I found out I was pregnant, I found myself listening to Bernadette Peters sing “Children Will Listen” on repeat. 

This is one of the things that makes the work of Stephen Sondheim so special: It ages with you. It has so many layers that you always hear it differently, depending on where you are in your life. As you grow and change, his work grows and changes with you, to give you something more. We see something different in it and ourselves everytime we encounter it.

My personal encounters with Into the Woods all came flooding back to me when I was first approached about directing this production. I started to think about how our understanding of stories changes as we age. I thought of some of my own family stories—moments that I see so differently now as an adult. This felt like the perfect entry point for seeing a story that so many of us are so familiar with, but in a brand new way. Whether this is your first viewing of this musical, or you know all of the lyrics by heart, I hope that something touches you tonight. I hope you discover something about yourself or something about the world that you haven’t considered before. 

Sondheim is known to have said that Into the Woods is a play about starting out by acting selfishly, then learning to act as a community. After what we have all experienced over the last few years, that seems to be the most perfect story for this moment. So tonight, through the eyes of a child, you will see why these stories change, and how we learn to work for something greater than ourselves.

—M. Bevin O'Gara, director

Fairy Tales About Fairy Tales

For centuries on end, the value of a fairy tale was in its flexibility: each was a curious mixture of repeated characters or plot points with details that only made certain sense in a specific context, time, and place. One of the most impactful transitions in fairy tales came from a Victorian-era ideal: textual authority, often at the expense of orality and variance. The true pace of change within and of fairy tales is dizzying, and not all variants give us as rich, developed context as Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine do in Into the Woods. Part of the magic of the music of Into the Woods lies in how the characters rationalize their choices and changes aloud. For example, in his pursuit of Little Red’s cloak, the Baker convinces himself that “things are only what you need them for—what’s important is who needs them more.” Indeed, the characters of Into the Woods demonstrate the empowerment of changing the rules of a story in the very singing of it.

The notion of an author of a fairy or folk tale is a flawed one: long before recorded historiography, stories of characters in a world distinct from one’s own due to the presence of magic have circulated. Perhaps the most striking feature of the so-called classic fairy tale is the emphasis on a known version, with fixed characters, objects, plot points, and moral messages for young children, conveyed by fireside by someone with a name such as “Mother Goose” or “Grimm.” However, even the Eurocentric fairy tale has a more storied past than this, and a strikingly more feminist one. In and outside the late 17th century court of King Louis XIV of France, the women at Versailles shared in their fairy tales, or “contes de fées,” as vehicles for critique of such institutions as marriage and education. In Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked author Catherine Orenstein’s estimation, fairy tales were “faux naive” at the start of their recorded European history, the fanciful nature of the tales transforming explicit commentary into implicit observation, safe from censure for the storytellers’ questioning of increasingly codified norms.

The sharp turn toward marketing fairy tales to children has contributed to what folklorist Maria Tatar calls a “pedagogy of fear,” in that so many of the tales stripped of their particular social or historical moment have left children in the dark about everything from social norms to expectations to rites of passage. Within these stories about stories lies a fundamental paradox of their transmission: if the fairy tale’s lifeblood depends on circulation aloud, the 18th-century debate over how to preserve that in spirit and practice reflected anxieties that remain with us, about the responsibility of popular culture to community, and how to engage the interplay between the written and the oral. Moreover, it serves as a reminder that any two characters who represent competing interests can become the villain and the hero of any fairy tale. May we remember this as we each consider what we may wish for in the woods.

—Alyssa Schmidt, dramaturg

ACT I

SCENE 1
Opening

SCENE 2
Cinderella at the Grave
Hello, Little Girl
I Guess This Is Goodbye
Maybe They're Magic
Baker's Reprise
I Know Things Now
A Very Nice Prince
First Midnight

SCENE 3 
Giants in the Sky
Agony
A Very Nice Prince (Reprise)
It Takes Two
Second Midnight

SCENE 4 
Stay with Me
On the Steps of the Palace
The Potion

SCENE 5 
Finale 

ACT II

SCENE 1 
Opening

SCENE 2
Agony (Reprise)
Witch's Lament
Any Moment
Moment in the Woods
Your Fault
Last Midnight
No More
No One Is Alone
Finale

THE BAKER – Jacob Conley (Cover: Darrick Brown)
THE BAKER’S WIFE – Virginia Vogel (Cover: Maggie Wisniewski)
LITTLE RED – Melia Jost (Cover: Gracin Wilkins)
THE WITCH – Kaitlyn Sumner (Cover: Caroline Herbert)
CINDERELLA – Alexandra Sica (Cover: Maggie Wisniewski)
RAPUNZEL – Olivia Foght
JACK – Nico Ochoa (Cover: Caetano De Sá)
JACK’S MOTHER – Hayden Lockhart (Cover: Bella Donneruno)
NARRATOR – Ryan Norton (Cover: Jackson D. Randall)
MYSTERIOUS MAN – Jackson D. Randall (Cover: Ryan Norton)
THE CHILD –  Eli Douglas (Cover: Deja Breitfeller)
CINDERELLA’S PRINCE – Jack Schonfelder (Cover: Jaiden Jones)
RAPUNZEL’S PRINCE – Gavin Rasmussen (Cover: Jaiden Jones)
WOLF – Connor Zeidman (Cover: Jack Schonfelder)
MILKY WHITE – Bridget Delaney
THE GIANT – Eevie Perez
CINDERELLA’S MOTHER / BIRD – Kindred Moore
CINDERELLA’S FATHER – Nate Walsh (Cover: Isaac Tardy)
GRANNY – Keighly Brown
STEWARD – Scotty Atienza
STEP MOTHER – Hannah Chiappine
FLORINDA – Kira Avolio
LUCINDA – Sophie Lindwall
SLEEPING BEAUTY / BIRD – Rory Shirley
SNOW WHITE / BIRD – Anna Beyer

Swings:
CINDELLA’S MOTHER/ RAPUNZEL/ SNOW WHITE/ SLEEPING BEAUTY/ BIRDS
Isa Sánchez
STEPMOTHER/ GRANNY 
Anna Beyer
STEPSISTERS/ GIANT 
Rory Shirley
STEWARD/ MILKY WHITE
Nate Walsh

FLUTE 1
Devyn Sowry

CLARINET 
Mason Davis

BASSOON 1
Christian Arroyo Castillo

HORN 1
Yixiang Wang

HORN 2
Ricardo Verde

TRUMPET 1
Tiago Ferreira

PERCUSSION 1
Yun-Chen Chou

PIANO
Emi Nishida (staff)

ELECTRIC KEYBOARD/SYNTH
Raban Brunner

VIOLIN STAND 1A
Christine Chen

VIOLIN II STAND 1A
Rowan Gemma

VIOLA STAND 1A
Kaedyn Colton

VIOLA STAND 1B
Emily Rome

CELLO STAND 1
Claire Bostick

BASS STAND 1
Nicolette Kindred

M. Bevin O'Gara, director, is an associate professor of theater at Boston Conservatory. She was the producing artistic director at the Kitchen Theatre Company and spent most of her career at the Huntington Theatre Company. She also has directed at Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Cleveland Playhouse, SpeakEasy Stage, Company One, Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Lyric Stage, Nora Theatre, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, and New Repertory Theatre. O'Gara is the proud recipient of the Lois Roach Award for Outstanding Commitment to the Boston Theater Community. Learn more about O'Gara.

Kristin Loeffler, scenic designer, has worked on numerous local productions, including Tiny Beautiful Things at Gloucester Stage, Popcorn Falls at Greater Boston Stage Company, and The Treasurer at Lyric Stage Company. Other credits include productions at Harvard/A.R.T., SpeakEasy Stage Company, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, and Barrington Stage. Loeffler received an Independent Reviewers of New England Award for her work on Moby Dick at New Repertory Theater. She holds an M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon and a  B.A. from Stanford University.

Justin Lahue, assistant scenic designer, is a Boston-based theater artist and filmmaker. His previous collaborations include work with Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, SpeakEasy Stage Company, Seacoast Repertory Theatre, and Stagewright Films. He holds a B.A. in theater from Suffolk University. Learn more about Lahue. 

Alyssa Schmidt, dramaturg, has served as a freelance dramaturg for over a decade and a production dramaturg at the Conservatory since 2015. Alyssa has been delighted to engage the often surprising context of various fairy tales, and is so grateful for the conversations along this path with each member of the amazing artistic team on this production.

Annie Wiegand, lighting designer, is the first and only professional, deaf lighting designer in the U.S. theater industry. Her notable designs include productions with Playwrights Horizons (off-Broadway), Zach Theatre, Signature Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Dallas Theater Center, Huntington Theatre Company, and Kitchen Theatre Company. Wiegand received her M.F.A. in lighting design from Boston University and is an assistant professor in the theater and dance program at Gallaudet University. Learn more about Wiegand.

CREATIVE TEAM:
Director – M. Bevin O'Gara
Music Director/Conductor – Eric Stern
Assistant Music Director – Raban Brunner
Choreographer/Intimacy/Fight Consultant – Kira Trolio
Scenic Designer – Kristin Loeffler
Costume Designer – Chelsea Kerl
Lighting Designer – Annie Wiegand
Sound Designer – Elizabeth Cahill
Dramaturg – Alyssa Schmidt
Production Stage Manager – Katie Arnold
Assistant Stage Manager – Emily Hanson
Assistant Scenic Designer – Justin Lahue
Assistant Costume Designer – Kat Ellen Lawrence
Assistant Sound Designer – Sarah Miller 

PRODUCTION STAFF:
Director of Performance Services and Producer – Hanna Oravec 
Principal Stage Manager – Bethany Rachel
Assistant Stage Manager – Emily Hanson
Co-Technical Directors – Greg Rishoi and Taylor Kaufman
Costume Shop Manager – Alison Pugh
Assistant Costume Shop Manager – Leah Foley
Drapers/Stitchers – Caroline Seeley, Sam Martin
Stitcher – Lindsey Weaver
Costume Shop Intern – Natasha Newcomb
Wardrobe Manager – Blue Barber
Wardrobe Assistant – Kiara Escalera
Audio Supervisor/A1 – Steve Younkins
Audio Assistant – Maddy Poston
A2 – Maddie Hanley
Lighting Supervisor – Matthew Martino
Production Electrician – Gabe Goldman
Assistant Master Electrician – Colby Stack
Props Manager – Larry Dembski
Props Artisan – Danielle Ibrahim
Stage Supervisor – Steve Toren
Zack Box Technical Director – Audrey Kimball

STUDENT PRODUCTION STAFF:
Assistant Directors – Isaac Tardy, Arriana Glenn
Assistant Choreographer/Dance Captain – Emma Resek
Assistant Stage Managers – Carson Hollingsworth, Landon Stephens
Rehearsal Pianists – Emi Nishida, Evelyn Tomaro, Jayla McLennan
Assistant Dramaturg – Tiffany Adams
Production Assistants – Meghan Hoey, Julia Kelly, Olivia Monarch, Brogan Nelson, Lori Newsom, Kalika Reece, Aidan Rufer, Cooper Sheehy, Trisha Soo, Preston Milne
Student Crew – Sarah Boush, Warren Maness, Olivia Goosman, Sophie Davis, Claire Flynn, Joshua Griffin, Sage Futterman, Maya Huberty, Sophie Shaw, Candy (Xinyi) Liu, Maximus Farrar
Costume Assistants – Maya Boyce, Penn Burall, Jacob Fincannon, Carson Hollingsworth, Oliva Martinez, Emily O’Connor
Intimacy Captain – Hannah Chiappine
Run Crew – Sophie Davis, Claire Flynn, Joshua Griffin, Sage Futterman, Maya Huberty, Sophie Shaw, Candy (Xinyi) Liu, Maximus Farrar, Sarah Boush, Olivia Goosman, Isabella Alfaro
Production Assistants – Evelyn Dumeer, Meghan Hoey, Julia Kelly, Olivia Monarch, Brogan Nelson, Lori Newsom, Kalika Reece, Aidan Rufer, Cooper Sheehy, Trisha Soo, Preston Milne
Costume Assistants – Maya Boyce, Penn Burall, Jacob Fincannon, Carson Hollingsworth, Oliva Martinez, Emily O’Connor 

CONCERT SERVICES STAFF:
Senior Manager of Concert Services – Luis Herrera 
Concert Production Coordinator – Matthew Carey
Concert Production Manager – Kendall Floyd
Manager of Performance Technology – Wes Fowler
Performance Technology Technicians – Sara Pagiaro, Goran Daskalov

• Jermaine Hill
• Isaac Leaverton
• Shawna Kelley