The Busiest Dramaturg
Hartford Stage Associate Artistic Director Elizabeth Williamson has had a busy few months. She has been shuttling overseas to serve as a dramaturg on two different shows which she’s been involved with for years and which happen to be getting produced at the same time. In London, Williamson has been working on “The Inheritance” by Matthew Lopez, which was a success at the Young Vic theater this past winter and is now in the West End. The play, which was originally commissioned by Hartford Stage, features Vanessa Redgrave and is inspired by the E.M. Forster novel “Howard’s End.”
The other show is Bess Wohl’s “Make Believe,” which is opening the Hartford Stage season, where it runs through Sept. 30. It’s another Hartford Stage commission. When she was associate artistic director of the Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake City, Utah, from 2008-2012, Williamson oversaw Bess Wohl’s first two professionally produced plays, “Touch(ed)” and “In.”
“Make Believe” is the fifth play Williamson and Wohl have worked on together, and “The Inheritance” is the fifth she’s done with Lopez (who’s best known in Connecticut for “The Whipping Man, “Somewhere” and “The Legend of Georgia McBride”). “You develop that level of trust,” Williamson says.
The overlapping gigs meant Williamson would spend a week or two at rehearsals in London, then hop a plane and spend some time in Hartford, then fly back and forth until both shows were up. “It’s difficult to be a dramaturg,” she says, “without being in the room.” To add to her already full plate, Williamson is directing the next Hartford Stage show of this new season, Shakespeare’s “Henry V” Oct. 11 through Nov. 11.