Playwright's Note The Virgin Queen Entertains Her Fool

Playwright's Note

I write “Here-and-Now” plays and “There-and-Then” plays. The former take place in familiar environments with characters we’d recognize in our current world; the latter are set in 19th-century London, or 1950s Boston, or 13th-century France, or St. Louis in 1941.

One of the rewards of writing a There-and-Then play is the opportunity to dive into an unfamiliar culture, with its particular worldviews and values, and to “try on the clothing” of its people. What do they believe? What do they eat for breakfast? How do they go to the bathroom, relieve pain, punish wrongdoers? Another reward is the way There-and-Then can shed light on Here-and-Now – to see our contemporary concerns through the lens of “a long time ago and far, far away,” and perhaps find meaning and metaphor that are invisible to us in our own time.

Not surprisingly, The Virgin Queen Entertains Her Fool is a There-and-Then play. So I did plenty of research in an effort to make this Renaissance court in “an unfamiliar country” as plausible as possible. But I also thought a lot about how it might speak to Here-and-Now.

One thing I noticed was how many queens have shown up in our popular culture in recent years: multiple portraits of both Elizabeths, Queen Anne in The Favourite, the musical Six and the badass queens in Game of Thrones. (I don’t include the throng of Disney princesses, as these are young enough to still believe they “can have it all,” and haven’t yet had to deal with the actual burdens of statecraft.) When I started, we had also just gone through the 2016 Presidential campaign – the first time a major U.S. party had nominated a female candidate. So I guess I was primed to work on a play exploring, among other things, the particular trials and sacrifices of women in power.

As I continued to develop the play through the next Presidential election cycle, our nation suddenly became engaged in grave questions about succession and the peaceful (or violent) transfer of power. All at once, that seemingly archaic word “insurrection” was back in fashion, and “ye olde” was new again. And now here we are, heading into yet another important election, considering leadership, values, popular government – and, of course, the seemingly scarce commodity of truth and the weighty ramifications of lying.

I’m deeply grateful to my longtime friend and collaborator Aaron Posner for bringing The Virgin Queen Entertains Her Fool to American Players Theatre, and for APT’s enthusiastic embrace of the world premiere of a new play that aspires to be both There-and-Then and Here-and-Now. Whatever you may take away from this production and back into your own 2024, I sincerely hope you enjoy the ride!

- Michael Hollinger, Playwright of The Virgin Queen Entertains Her Fool