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Christina Anderson’s translation uplifts the humor and metaphors of Shakespeare’s original text, illuminating archaic language for modern audiences. She says of her process, “At a macro view the story was straight forward…But as I settled into the text’s terrain, I discovered tightly packed mounds of rich, dense soil full of metaphors, similes, antiquated slang, double and triple entendre…how a turn of phrase can bloom into a wonderful stream of poetry; the universal connections between nature and human fate; the power of verse as a weapon, a salve, a tool, or a defense.” It is in The Comedy of Errors that Anderson found a “treasure trove of literary gems” that make this translation accessible, hilarious, and relatable to the modern theater goer.
Playwright
Christina Anderson
Christina Anderson is a 2022 Tony Award Nominee for Outstanding Book of the Broadway musical Paradise Square. She is a playwright, screenwriter, educator, and creative. Plays include: The Ripple the Wave That Carried Me Home, How to Catch Creation, pen/man/ship, Man in Love, and Good Goods. Her work has appeared at The Goodman Theatre, OSF, The Public Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Kansas City Rep, and other theaters in the United States and Canada. Awards and honors include: 2021 Prince Prize, 2020 United States Artists Fellow, MacDowell Fellowship, Lily Awards Harper Lee Prize, Herb Alpert Award nomination, Barrymore Nomination, and New Dramatists Residency. Her work has appeared multiple times on the annual Kilroy’s List, an industry survey of excellent new works by female playwrights. She taught playwriting at the David Geffen School of Drama, Wesleyan University, Rutgers University, SUNY Purchase College, and served as the interim Head of Playwriting at Brown University. Christina was a television staff writer on the CBS series TOMMY. Current projects: a collection of plays to be published by Tripwire Harlot Press in the Fall of 2022, Public Theatre commission for the stage adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Barracoon, and Ericka Huggins’s biographical screenplay.
Dramaturg
Martine Kei Green-Rogers
MARTINE KEI GREEN-ROGERS (Dramaturg) is the Dean of the Theatre School at DePaul University. Her dramaturgical credits include its not a trip,its a journey, He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box and The Ohio State Murders at Round House Theatre; Wind in the Door and Long Way Down at the Kennedy Center; The Catastrophist at Marin; Sweat at the Goodman; King Hedley II, Radio Golf, Five Guys Named Moe, Blues for An Alabama Sky, Gem of the Ocean, Waiting for Godot, Iphigenia at Aulis, Seven Guitars, The Mountaintop, and Home at Court Theatre; It’s Christmas, Carol!, Hairspray, The Book of Will, Shakespeare in Love, UniSon, Hannah and the Dread Gazebo, Comedy of Errors, To Kill A Mockingbird, The African Company Presents Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and Fences at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Broadway credits include Jagged Little Pill.
In Print
The Comedy of Errors
Shakespeare’s archetypal slapstick comedy, now with updated jokes and wordplay.
One of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, The Comedy of Errors is a farcical tale of separated twins and mistaken identities. This slapstick play is a staple of the genre, including madcap bawdiness, love at first sight, reunions, and happily-ever-afters. Christina Anderson’s translation dives deep into the joy of the original text, reinterpreting the metaphor, antiquated slang, and double and triple entendre for a contemporary audience.
