King Richard II, David Geffen School of Drama (2026)

FEBRUARY 6–7, 2026

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 of Student Life

PRESENTS

The Life and Death of King Richard the Second

By William Shakespeare

Adapted by Andrew Rodriguez and Zoë Nagel

Directed by Andrew Rodriguez

cast creative team

Scenic Designer

Wenjin Zhang

Costume Designer

John Hardy

Lighting Designer

Mila Mussatt

Sound Designer

Robert Salerno

Production Dramaturg

Zoë Nagel

Technical Director

Meredith Wilcox

Fight Director

Michael Rossmy

Stage Manager

ty ruwe

Aumerle/Queen

Yishan Hao

Green/Ross/Murderer

Nancy Kimball

King Richard the Second

Sarah Lo

Marshal/Duke of York/Stable Boy

Francisco Morandi Zerpa

John of Gaunt/Willoughby/ Scroop/Murderer

Christopher Thomas Pow

Henry Bolingbroke

Darius Sakui

Thomas Mowbray/Northumberland

Max Sheldon

Bushy/Bishop of Carlisle/ Duchess of York

Henita Telo

atmospheric and content guidance

This production contains violence.

The Life and Death of King Richard the Second is performed without an intermission.

This production is supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.

artistic

Assistant Sound Designer and Engineer

LT Taylor

Assistant Stage Manager

Jiawei Pei

production

Associate Production Manager

Bryant Heatherly

Assistant Technical Director

Chloe Waters

Production Electrician

Cat Slanski

Associate Safety Advisors

Mae Mironer

Forrest Rumbaugh

Run Crew

Nicole Brooks, Ruben Carrazana, Roberto Di Donato, Parker Essex Hardy

administration

Associate Managing Director

Iyanna Huffington Whitney

Assistant Managing Director

Jocelyn Lopez-Hagmann

Management Assistants

Roberto Di Donato

Ebonee Johnson

House Manager

Claudia Campos

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.

special thanks

Acme Lighting, Bethany Caputo, Matthew Chong, Andrea Miller, and Catherine Young.

Front: Self-Portrait with Striped Shirt by Egon Schiele, 1910; “Richard” is the actual signature of Richard II.

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 Projects 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 Peggy Cowles ’65, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning 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.

On February 7th, 1601, the Earl of Essex paid Shakespeare’s theater troupe, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, forty shillings above their usual fee to stage a production of Richard II. One day later, he attempted a coup against Queen Elizabeth I.

The Earl didn’t choose Richard II at random. He evidently hoped that the “play [about] the deposyng and kyllyng of Kyng Rychard the second” would inspire the people to rise up and overthrow their Queen the way Richard II had been dethroned two hundred years prior. Richard’s character was certainly capricious and vain enough to plant outrage against monarchical tyranny in any audience’s mind.

Unluckily for the Earl, Elizabeth proved a far savvier ruler than Richard. She crushed the feeble uprising, tracked down the instigators, and sent the Earl of Essex to the Tower of London, where he was beheaded two weeks later.

The theater troupe’s last-minute programming choice was suspicious enough that they were interrogated alongside the Earl of Essex’s co-conspirators. In a society that considered monarchs divinely ordained, opposing a king was not only treason, but a crime against God.

Staging a deposition—even a historical one— tiptoed perilously close to blasphemy. The scene where Richard is stripped of his crown was so inflammatory at the time that the original printed quartos of Richard II removed it entirely. After all, people might get ideas…again.

Elizabeth, who had already survived a number of uprisings during her forty-year reign, was keenly aware of the play’s implications. “I am Richard,” she allegedly told her archivist after Essex’s rebellion. “Know ye not that?”

Of course, none of us today is a 16th-century queen identifying with Richard on the common ground of fragile monarchy. But over the course of the play, we watch Richard shed the narcissistic trappings of kingship and become a man. His story doesn’t climax in redemption, but in the crucial turning point of realizing that he is someone who needs redemption.

The play’s tragedy is that Richard only gets to put this recognition into practice once. Still, that one time is significant. Though he can’t save England, or himself, perhaps he can save one stable boy.

—Zoë Nagel, Production Dramaturg

“He is our cousin, cousin.”

Edward III