A 'Winter’s Tale’ So Magical, Shakespeare Could Only Have Dreamed about It

“Let’s put on a show!” director Abraham Joyner-Meyers ’21 shouts enthusiastically, ushering in the cast and crew. The dance rehearsal space at the American Repertory Theater is filled with a certain kind of tension. Nervous chatter fills the room and then silence. “Places!” Joyner-Meyers shouts — and so it begins: The first run-through rehearsal for this year’s production of “The Winter’s Tale.”

On Oct. 28 at the Loeb Ex, the Hyperion Shakespeare Company premiered its magical rendition of Shakespeare’s classic play. After a long time away from in-person theater, this is one of the very first productions at Harvard devoid of laptop screens, virtual backdrops, and — most importantly — Zoom.

“The Winter’s Tale,” first published in 1623, is one of Shakespeare’s more ambiguously classified plays, intertwining drama with much-needed comic relief. King Leontes, blinded by jealousy and passion, sends his wife to jail and banishes her newborn child from his country. A fruitful premise for tragic losses, mischievous games of pretend, and maybe even a happy ending.

“The goal is to do Shakespeare for the present moment, for right now,” Joyner-Meyers says. Nevertheless, The Winter’s Tale has been around for quite some time and proving the relevance of a play which has already been performed countless times is always a challenge. However, Hyperion’s production seems ready to tackle it, armed with innovative stage design and effects which aim to render this production nothing short of magical.

“Our original image for the show was taking the magic of the show and making it magical to the audience,” Joeyner-Meyers says. Hyperion has partnered with the Society of Harvard Undergraduate Magicians to bring this vision to life. Audience members can look forward to the defiance of gravity and the sudden disappearance of characters: Stage magic meets street magic.

“I love the literal take on magic that we are doing,” producer Sage Barnes ’25 says, “things that were impossible during the time that it was written but make the story come to life in a way that I hope Shakespeare would really enjoy.”

The cast and crew want to lean into the ambiguity of the play, convincing the audience that anything is possible in the theater. However, the reasons that drew cast and crew to the play initially are rooted in deeper emotional themes.

"It is about separation and finding each other again,” Joyner-Meyers says. “It is about reconnection. I think after all of us have been apart from each other for 16 months, coming back together, coming into a theater to tell stories — that moment has just become so meaningful, and so specific to what we are doing right now.”

“I think there is a very introspective message that people will take away from having seen this play: the fact that you have to look inside of yourself and point out what you did wrong,” Felipe Albors ’25 says.

Albors, who plays Leontes, hopes to show audiences that it is possible to atone for your sins and transform into a better person, perhaps the greatest magic trick of all.

The cast and crew have grown together over the past weeks. "Everyone is excited to come to rehearsals,” Albors says. “They want to be here, and more than that, we are all a bunch of people that have really creative ideas.”

Those creative ideas certainly come in handy when working on a play in which a guy gets eaten by a bear.

"It's a play from the very end of Shakespeare's career where he is just writing crazy shit,” Joyner-Meyers says, “crazy theatre that broke the norms even of what he was doing then, and certainly still feels new and modern.”