By Caitlin SmithPLAY Writer

Mary Zimmerman is back directing on a Northwestern stage for the first time in 11 years. The Tony Award-winning director and NU alumna is leading a cast of NU students in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, a mainstage play opening on campus this weekend.

Cymbeline’s characters, like so many others that sprung from Shakespeare’s imagination, are a fascinating combination of conniving, na’ve, banished, secretly married and murderous individuals.

Imogen (Communication senior Atley Loughridge) is King Cymbeline’s daughter. A beautiful and articulate young woman, she has secretly wed Leonatus (Communication senior Adam Kantor), a man well below her in social standing. Much to the newlyweds’ dismay, King Cymbeline (Communication senior Jordan Cohen) learns of their marriage and banishes his daughter’s groom from the British empire.

In his new home in Italy, Leonatus meets Iachimo (Communication junior Marco Minichiello), who bets Leonatus that he, Iachimo, can snag Imogen or else he will lose 10,000 ducats.

What ensues is a complex, but highly entertaining, series of interwoven storylines involving Imogen’s treacherous stepmother (Communication sophomore Lily Howard), her smitten stepbrother (Communication senior Zeke Sulkes), the deceitful Iachimo and Imogen’s long-lost brothers.

“The kind of attention you have to pay to the text in Shakespeare is a very valuable learning experience,” Zimmerman says. “Each sentence connects to the next; it’s not just ornamental, as may seem immediately apparent.”

Cymbeline is no exception, and from the looks of it, the show will be an adornment on an already stellar career that has earned Zimmerman a Tony Award and countless other honors for her excellence in directing.

In terms of the show itself, Zimmerman says the main challenge has been the arrangement of the play.

“It has a very odd structure to it,” she says. “I was constantly resisting that structure and then, after a while, I added a second intermission.” She now says she thinks the show flows much better.

Zimmerman’s return to the NU stage has not been without its personal challenges. For one, she says she misses the schedule of a professional production.

“The hardest adjustment for me has been doing evening rehearsals. I’m used to a 10 a.m. -5 or 6 p.m. day, ” she says. “We start rehearsing here at 6p.m., and that’s when I used to be winding down at that point. That’s definitely been the hardest thing.”

Zimmerman’s style and vision have been invaluable to her cast.

“She’s brilliant,” says Howard. “And she’s insanely perceptive. As an actor, you can’t get away with anything because she calls you on it.”

Another remarkable aspect of Zimmerman’s direction, Howard says, is her emphasis on the production as a whole. “She has drilled into us that it’s not just about us as individuals. It’s been great because it gives me a much better awareness of what it means to be part of a show. Each of our jobs is to contribute.”

This united effort is one that the crew is likewise a part of. Communication freshman Jefferson Grubbs, who runs the show’s lighting board, is working behind the scenes for the first time. He says it has been enthralling to learn how much lighting affects every aspect of the show.

He, too, says he has loved working with Zimmerman.

“It is fascinating just watching her interact with the actors and the designers,” Grubbs says.

Zimmerman’s rapport with her actors and crew comes so easily perhaps because of her history at NU. Studying here as an undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. student, Zimmerman is now a professor of Performance Studies.

“I came here when I was 18 and essentially never left,” she says. “I did my student teaching here and started teaching classes here and there, and then I’m not exactly sure when I was actually hired back to be a professor.”

Zimmerman recruits talent from her classes for her projects off-campus. For the recent Eleven Rooms of Proust, Zimmerman’s cast comprised some of her students.

Between juggling her many endeavors, Zimmerman has little free time. She will a break next year, when she will be on leave for the first time.

Her leave will be spent working on current and future projects. Her most recent play, Argonautika, will be playing at four different theaters next year. While she has three plays already published, “more are in the works,” she says. She has also been asked to write some books, and her opera will premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan this September.

In the meantime, though, there is Cymbeline, a carefully interpreted and fantastically put-together show.

It opens Friday, Feb. 9 at the Barber Theatre and runs through Feb. 18. Show times are Feb. 9, 10, 14, 15, 16 and 17 at 8p.m.and Feb. 11 and 18 at 2 p.m.. Tickets are $25 for the general public, $22 for NU faculty and staff and $10 for students. They are available through the Theatre and Interpretation Center’s box office at (847) 491-7282.

Medill sophomore Caitlin Smith is a PLAY writer. She can be reached at [email protected].