Welcome to Cymbeline: Interrupted!

Please note that you can view

• The Program (with separate tabs for the cast and production team)
• A Synopsis of Cymbeline for orienting yourself to Shakespeare’s story
• A Let's Talk page to send us your thoughts - we want to hear from our audience!
• TIPS FOR WATCHING any time you have questions or get lost

Our production was interrupted in March, along with everything else in our world, just two weeks from opening.

And the interruptions have continued—from weather changes affecting filming, to Covid-19 concerns, to working with new technology—as we modified our original plans for a live, staged show... into a radio play... augmented by video images... shaped into this interactive website adventure. We continued (daily!) to adapt our plans to the ever-changing reality around us.

Interaction is one of theatre’s key gifts, usually created by bringing people into a room together for a shared experience. If we couldn’t be in a room together, I wanted to maintain that interactivity, even as we maintain safe distance in a pandemic.

In Cymbeline: Interrupted, we acknowledge the world around us, including masks, distancing, zoom calls, and the adaptations we have to make when things don’t go as planned.

Umble Center stage is Cymbeline’s Court, where we hoped to stage the play on a set that was designed, but unable to be completed.

Posthumus travels to a somewhat disorienting land, where there are friends but also challengers gathered around a fire that provides both food and sparks (literal and metaphorical).

Eventually we land in an unfamiliar wilderness, where we have to decode and respond to an ever-changing world.

Cymbeline itself is a story of interruptions—storylines that weave in and out of each other, a new character introduced halfway through, scenes and characters that seem pulled from multiple other Shakespeare plays from comic to tragic, pastoral to historical. In the spring, we called it “Shakespeare in a Blender.”

So we’ve embraced that idea of interruption in this iteration; we offer you an adventure crafted from unexpected interruptions and containing purposeful interruptions.

To help you with the big picture, we’ve provided a synopsis, and you can also listen to an audio recording of the entire play, in order, at this link to our Radio Play (originally broadcast on 91.1 The Globe).

In pulling apart the strands from that big picture (the many stories in a blender), on this website you can follow Imogen, or Cloten, or Posthumus, from their own points of view. You will have the opportunity to follow one character for as long as you like (all the way to the end!), as well as opportunities to switch tracks and see events unfolding from another character’s point of view.

My hope is that you explore, respond, follow your curiosity, and find your own unique way into the story.

Tips for your adventure

• You can watch this on any device, but you will have the best experience on a laptop or desk top computer, and we recommend full screen.
• Turn your volume up for the original music - it’s beautiful!
• Your adventure is likely to last somewhere between 45-90 minutes depending on the choices you make.
• You can pause or stop at any time, and when you return you will have the option to begin where you left off or start over.
• You will make choices and move forward in the story (or to a parallel scene), but not backwards.
• You won’t see every scene that Shakespeare wrote as you follow a particular character’s point of view. Your journey will be unique! (And you can watch it multiple times to catch scenes you missed.)
• Remember that you are following the story through the eyes of the character you last picked, until your next choice. That means that sometimes, based on the last choice you made, you will automatically be sent to another scene following the one you just watched.
• If you get lost or confused, you can
  • Check the Synopsis in the upper left corner of your screen
  • Start over and make different choices
  • Look for contextual clues and embrace the interruptions!
• At the end of your adventure, you will be offered the chance to check in on other parts of the story, if you are curious, and see some of the scenes you may have missed.
• You will have buttons to rewind or fast forward within a scene, and you can rewatch the scene you just finished. Once you move to another scene, you won’t be able to return to the previous scene without starting over.
• You will have options to watch “outtakes” from the cast and crew — short scenes, behind the scenes — from their own dorm rooms (or, in the case of some of our graduates, their new homes in other states). You can recognize these by their titles or by the blue arrows. After you watch an outtake, you will be returned to the story at the same point, with the same choices you had before.

An Example

You may watch an attempted fight between Posthumus and Cloten, after which you will have the following options:

• REWATCH SCENE: Return to the beginning of the scene you just watched and watch it again in case you missed something
• CLOTEN: Follow Cloten back to Cymbeline’s Court after the fight, where he tries to impress everyone and win Imogen’s love
• POSTHUMUS: Follow Posthumus to Italy, and see their adventures unfold there
• MAKING SOUNDS FOR THE SWORD FIGHT: Watch a short behind-the-scenes look at making the foley sound (after which you will be returned to these choices)
• POSTHUMUS IN THEIR DOWNTIME: A short outtake of Posthumus having fun behind the scenes (after which you will be returned to these choices)

Be sure to check out the Program to see the cast, production team, and others who made this production possible!

And now, when you are ready... press the green button in the center of the home page to begin!

— Michelle Milne, Director

Tips for your adventure

• You can watch this on any device, but you will have the best experience on a laptop or desk top computer, and we recommend full screen.
• Turn your volume up for the original music - it’s beautiful!
• Your adventure is likely to last somewhere between 45-90 minutes depending on the choices you make.
• You can pause or stop at any time, and when you return you will have the option to begin where you left off or start over.
• You will make choices and move forward in the story (or to a parallel scene), but not backwards.
• You won’t see every scene that Shakespeare wrote as you follow a particular character’s point of view. Your journey will be unique! (And you can watch it multiple times to catch scenes you missed.)
• Remember that you are following the story through the eyes of the character you last picked, until your next choice. That means that sometimes, based on the last choice you made, you will automatically be sent to another scene following the one you just watched.
• If you get lost or confused, you can
  • Check the Synopsis in the upper left corner of your screen
  • Start over and make different choices
  • Look for contextual clues and embrace the interruptions!
• At the end of your adventure, you will be offered the chance to check in on other parts of the story, if you are curious, and see some of the scenes you may have missed.
• You will have buttons to rewind or fast forward within a scene, and you can rewatch the scene you just finished. Once you move to another scene, you won’t be able to return to the previous scene without starting over.
• You will have options to watch “outtakes” from the cast and crew — short scenes, behind the scenes — from their own dorm rooms (or, in the case of some of our graduates, their new homes in other states). You can recognize these by their titles or by the blue arrows. After you watch an outtake, you will be returned to the story at the same point, with the same choices you had before.

An Example

You may watch an attempted fight between Posthumus and Cloten, after which you will have the following options:

• REWATCH SCENE: Return to the beginning of the scene you just watched and watch it again in case you missed something
• CLOTEN: Follow Cloten back to Cymbeline’s Court after the fight, where he tries to impress everyone and win Imogen’s love
• POSTHUMUS: Follow Posthumus to Italy, and see their adventures unfold there
• MAKING SOUNDS FOR THE SWORD FIGHT: Watch a short behind-the-scenes look at making the foley sound (after which you will be returned to these choices)
• POSTHUMUS IN THEIR DOWNTIME: A short outtake of Posthumus having fun behind the scenes (after which you will be returned to these choices)

— Michelle Milne, Director