Christine Albright, Actor

Christine Albright played Shakespeare’s daughter Judith in Equivocation at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Interview Excerpt

ON PLAYING JUDITH IN EQUIVOCATION

CHRISTINE ALBRIGHT:  I play Shakespeare’s daughter. I’m the—the lone girl in the play. It is—it feels like—every time we go out and take our bow we all joke about this—you will probably hear this a lot when people come back here—we bow and there are six of us and we all look around and go, “Really? This is it?” because Tony Heald and I, we don’t play other characters but the other four men in the play cover, I want to say sixty roles. And so—but I—I am very fortunate in that I—I don’t have to do all of the costume changes that they have to do. I just pick up after them and make sure they change their costumes.

But I play Shakespeare’s daughter, Judith, who is the surviving of his twins—the surviving girl of—of his—of his pair of twins.

STEVE ROWLAND: Whose brother was?

CHRISTINE ALBRIGHT:  Her brother is—was Hamnet. We suppose in this play that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet for him. But Shakespeare had three children. Susanna was the oldest, then he had two—the twins, Susanna—Susanna, then Judith and Hamnet. And when they were eleven, Hamnet died.

And the play supposes that the relationship between Shakespeare and his daughter, Judith, was very strained because of the death of the—the boy.

It’s also a huge theme in the play, is the idea of posterity and—and how—how will you—how will you be remembered, how will your name carry on when you don’t have a male heir to carry your name on.

We all know that the Shakespeare name died when Shakespeare died, because he did only leave the two girls. And yet, at the end of our play we say, you know, “But your—your soul lives on in—in these wonderful plays that you wrote.” And—and he is—he is remembered; he is remembered for that. So though the name doesn’t survive anymore, he did—he did leave a legacy. He does—he did leave that behind.