Talk:List of Shakespeare in the Park productions at the Delacorte Theater

Public Works productions

A couple days ago, the 2019 production of Hercules was added to the table by Cardei012597. So far we have not been including any of the annual Public Works productions because they are not, strictly speaking, part of Shakespeare in the Park. If we continue with this criterion, Hercules should be removed for consistency. However, if there were consensus that the Public Works productions should be included (since they are Public Theater productions at the Delacorte), I would try to get all of them (seven, I'm guessing) added into article in short order. My instinct is that they should be in a separate table at the end and not in the main table, but I welcome feedback on that as well. ​​​​​​ Cheers —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 19:21, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

I can create a seperate table for Hercules at the bottom of the page. It won't take long. Cardei012597 (talk) 19:24, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

@JamesLucas and Cardei012597: As it stands, the "Public Works" section just kinda sits there with no context. Rhetorically speaking: what is "Public Works" and why is it included in this article? The section needs a brief introductory text that explains what it is and why it belongs here. I'm not particularly familiar with this so without doing some digging I don't have too strong of an opinion on whether or not to include them. I vaguely lean towards leaving them out since this list is specifically about Shakespeare in the Park productions; and if they are included we should have every production that matches the inclusion criteria. (PS. Appreciate the ping, and apologies for the late response.) --Xover (talk) 11:20, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Other series

I just became aware of a Festival Latino that, at the very least, included a production of Romeo & Juliet at the Delacorte in 1990. As with Public Works, this seems a poor fit for this list, but I’m stashing a citation and noting the tip-off source in case it proves significant enough to be worth adding to Public Theater. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 00:59, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

References

Name vs. brand

Moved from User talk:JamesLucas § Shakespeare in the Park edits

 – separating two distinct issues that had been raised in one section —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 23:18, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I think your edits were mistakes. (1) is clear, I'd say. (2) is debatable.

Your idea that "brand" is better than "name" is plain wrong. (Sorry!) "Brand" is appropriate for "Nabisco" or cattle branding; branding is not naming and it is the wrong concept here. E.g., "Metropolitan Opera" is a name, not a brand. Similarly, "Shakespeare in the Park" is not a brand; it is (or was) the name of the play series. Why do you think "brand" is appropriate?

I don't want to start an edit war, so let's discuss these points. Zaslav (talk) 10:18, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

From Merriam-Webster, the relevant parts of the definition of brand (noun):

3a (1) : a mark made by burning with a hot iron to attest manufacture or quality or to designate ownership (2) : a printed mark made for similar purposes : trademark

b(1) : a mark put on criminals with a hot iron (2) : a mark of disgrace : stigma

4a : a class of goods identified by name as the product of a single firm or manufacturer : make

b : a characteristic or distinctive kind a lively brand of theater

c : brand name sense 2

d : a public image, reputation, or identity conceived of as something to be marketed or promoted

Zaslav (talk) 11:15, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@Zaslav: Regarding ‘brand’ vs. ‘name’: this use falls under both definitions 4c and 4d above, so I think ‘brand’ is a good fit. The reason I think it’s a better fit than ‘name’ is that around the time of Joe Papp’s death, there was a fundamental shift in the way the Public Theater presented itself that went beyond a mere renaming. Poster styles changed, the organization was reconfigured, programs were added, others were pruned. NYSF was a sprawling year-round thing, while FSITP is a focused summer series. I want to connote that the thing being captured by the list morphed, and ‘name’ doesn’t do that. I’m happy to discuss this at greater length and invite other editors, but the talk page is probably a better venue in that case. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 19:57, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@JamesLucas: Thanks for your thoughts. I have very different feelings about 1 and 2!

I think you have a misunderstanding of the meaning of "brand". It does not say anything about reorganizing the system. "Name", not "brand", is the word for what something is called. There is overlap but they are not the same.

A brand is only a label denoting ownership or identification, like "Nabisco" on a package of cookies or "ZZ" (brand) on a steer belonging to the Double Z Ranch (name). We are talking about the name under which the plays in the park were offered, not a brand name. Anyway, to me "brand" in the sense you mean is completely inappropriate usage of "brand". A name of a summer series has always in the past, in particular in most of the lifetime of SITP, been called a "name", never a "brand", just as the name, not brand, of this article says "Shakespeare in the Park". No one in the earlier days of SITP would have ever said "brand" for any usage like that; it was strictly commercial.

If you want to mention reorganization, it has to be stated separately. "Brand" has no implications of reorganization; it is independent. To show how independent they are, the same brand "Nabisco" has been owned by several organizations under several names. They kept the brand name because it was a famous label. SITP is not identical to that situation, but "brand" says nothing about organization.

Zaslav (talk) 22:21, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

As I noted in my edit summary, I’m more opposed to ‘name’ than I am convinced that ‘brand’ is the best possible word. For now I’ll continue to argue for ‘brand’ in part because its a word the Public itself uses (it’s been a while since the podcast interview with designer Paula Scher came out, but I remember it being a pretty fun listen).

I agree that ‘name’ and ‘brand’ are different, but a name can be a subset of a brand. There was a new name introduce in the 1990s, but in a sense nothing was ‘renamed’ because the thing was altered so much from what existed under Joe Papp (with workshops and winter performances at the Astor Library and an obsession with producing every play in the Shakespearean canon) to what has existed since (with a renewed interest in reaching audiences who wouldn’t naturally show up “how sayest thou”).

For what it’s worth, I think your more restrictive definition of ‘brand’ was the commonly understood one until around 1960, give or take a decade, when the scope of ‘brand’ expanded to become a more encompassing concept. This essay from Forbes captures that shift pretty succinctly. This post from the brandXpress blog is glib but reflective of typical industry parlance. This essay on Bartleby is half behind a paywall and so weirdly written that I suspect that it’s plagiarized by a content mill, but, in a way, that underscores just how widespread this view of ‘brand’ has become.

With all that said, if there were a theater equivalent of the word ‘masthead’, that might be perfect. Is there such a word? —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 15:51, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

@JamesLucas: I see what you mean. I'm fumbling for something like "imprint" in theatre and not finding anything. But absent that, I think we can well consider name synonymous with brand in this instance. Since "Shakespeare in the Park" (or "Shakespeare Festival" for that matter) is not unique to the Public Theatre, calling it that aligns it with the wider brand; while at the same time the Public Theatre's Shakespeare in the Park performances have a brand identity of their own (using the Delacorte as the venue, etc.). But beyond strict definition, I would say that in terms of writing you could beneficially refer to "Free Shakespeare in the Park" as the name even though it went through a rebranding to "The New York Shakespeare Festival" at one point. Or you might think of it as the name here being the major and most prominent part of the brand, so that changing the name is significant enough to term it a rebranding rather than a mere name change. It's not a definitional problem, but one of copy-editing and communicating the correct connotation to the reader, is what I'm saying. Iff I've guessed correctly what the disagreement was about, of course. :) --Xover (talk) 14:56, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Roles

Moved from User talk:JamesLucas § Shakespeare in the Park edits

 – separating two distinct issues that had been raised in one section —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 23:18, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

What is wrong with adding the main roles of the production? I don't see why it has to be done uniformly. The reason I added that information is that I wanted to know who had performed Lear when I saw it in 1963. That information is not readily available; this seemed like the place to put it for anyone who wanted to know. I purposely only listed the main role for "Lear" and "As You Like It".

Zaslav (talk) 10:18, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Regarding inclusion of roles, I think doing so is going to make things really messy and confusing unless it’s done consistently and with clear consensus on the threshold for inclusion. Questions that arise:

1. If we denote one Lear but not every Lear, will the reader logically assume that for a production with no ‘(Lear)’ given, none of the actors listed was Lear?
2. Lear and Hamlet are obvious leads, but who is the lead in Twelfth Night? Sir Toby because he has the most lines? No one? Who is in and who is out?

I’m dubious but sincerely open to discussing this on the article’s talk page where we can invite more voices. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 19:57, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

I have no strong feeling about it. I don't fully agree with you; I don't support absolute uniformity; some plays have obvious leads and some don't; some roles might be listed and others not. I just wanted to help people like myself who might not have access to the New York Times online back files to search for the cast listing. I'm happy to let you and anyone else decide what to do.

Zaslav (talk) 22:21, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

Making desired information free to access is a motive I can appreciate.

@Xover, Fyunck(click), Graeme Bartlett, Xymcode, Oknazevad, Yoshiman6464, and SibTower1987: discussion of this point (and the one above) is most welcome. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 15:51, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Saying who performed what role may be a bit WP:UNDUE. If it is done, it would be best to have it for all actors. But that information is likely not of that much interest in this article. It would be more important on the page about the actor. But really I would not be reverting any changes made along those lines. My only edit here was to fix a spelling error. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:09, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

@JamesLucas: My apologies for being lame about responding. I very much appreciated the ping (and anyone should feel free to ping me to any discussion related to Shakespeare).

It's not clear from the thread here, but based on the revision history I'm guessing the issue is whether to include the role performed in parenthesis after the actor's name in the "Notable cast members" column? On that I actually feel the inclusion is not only merited but even critical and should be done universally. Just listing famous actors involved edges toward peacockery, but including the rôle turns it into valuable information. Or put another way, when looking at a performance of a play I'm not usually looking to see "So who famous was in it?", I'm looking to see "Which actor played the principal parts?". For brevity in the context of a list one also needs to filter on the notability of the actor—so it becomes the intersection of principal part with notable actors—but the primary axis is the role.

PS. @Zaslav: Uniformity is actually important here: including some and excluding others creates undue emphasis on the ones included. We don't have to do every entry right at once (it's ok do a bit at a time), but the end goal should be clear as uniform application. --Xover (talk) 14:44, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree with listing roles for all the named actors, and that uniformity is the goal but not necessarily done in one go. My view is that the interesting information is who plays main roles, defined as loosely as is convenient. The name of the role is not significant by itself, but the name of the actor is interesting if you know of the actors, and is much more interesting when combined with the role. (Compare with articles about operas and plays where the main roles' original cast is often listed.)

Do we need to have a vote? How is this decided? Zaslav (talk) 16:50, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

I’m game for trying to make this work if we can do it a bit methodically. I still have concerns about consistency (and I see Xover does too) and density, so I propose that we do this in three steps:

1. We run a limited formatting test here on the talk page by taking about three or four star-heavy years like 1988 thru 1991 and augmenting them with roles. We can use this to hash out:
   1. criteria for inclusion – Maybe we have to restrict the number of names for this to work? Maybe not? I remain worried that excluding anyone with a Wikipedia article is going to be messy and unsustainable if this list ever attracts a wider group of editors. I also think cutting out big names in bit roles would be fun-killing.
   2. formatting for clarity – We need to try to ensure that making the table more data-heavy doesn’t come at the cost of lost readability. Use of parentheses, en dashes, italics may all be worth looking at. Maybe we need a new structure with only one actor–role pairing per line? And of course we need to look at the list in both desktop and mobile browsers to reduce the odds that we’re harming to accessibility.
2. Assuming we get that trial table to a condition we’re conformable with, we then try to get to a critical mass of actor–role pairings before we go live. We don’t need to aim for 100%, but something around 50% might be reasonable. If this process promises or proves to be too messy for the talk page, we could build a sandbox for coördination of research.
3. Once we achieve a critical mass, we go live with all the new content quickly. If we have a sandbox, we just copy that table into the live article in one edit. If not, we find a day when at least two of us have a couple hours to dedicate and we do a little blitz manually populating the existing table with new data.

​Sound good? —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 23:05, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for thinking about how to do this. I'm willing to encourage other people. I can't give it the necessary attention. Zaslav (talk) 01:29, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

@JamesLucas and Zaslav: A first cut:

Year	Work performed	Director	Notable cast members	Ref.
1988	Much Ado About Nothing	Gerald Freedman	Blythe Danner (Beatrice) Kevin Kline (Benedick) Jerry Stiller (Dogberry) Brian Murray (Don Pedro)
	King John	Stuart Vaughan	Kevin Conway (King John) Jane White (Elinor) Mariette Hartley (Constance) Jay O. Sanders (Faulconbridge)
1989	Twelfth Night	Harold Guskin	Michelle Pfeiffer (Olivia) Jeff Goldblum (Malvolio) Gregory Hines (Feste) Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Viola) Fisher Stevens (Sir Andrew Aguecheek)
	Titus Andronicus	Michael Maggio	Bill Camp (Chiron) Keith David (Aaron) Donald Moffat (Titus Andronicus) Kate Mulgrew (Tamora)
1990	Richard III	Robin Phillips	Denzel Washington (Richard III) Mary Alice (Margaret of Anjou)
	The Taming of the Shrew	A. J. Antoon	Tracey Ullman (Kate) Morgan Freeman (Petruchio) Helen Hunt (Bianca)
1991	Othello	Joe Dowling	Raúl Júlia (Othello) Christopher Walken (Iago) Kathryn Meisle (Desdemona) Michel R. Gill (Michael Cassio) Mary Beth Hurt (Emilia)
	A Midsummer Night's Dream	Cacá Rosset	Rubens Caribé (Lysander) Ary França (Thisby) Cacá Rosset (Pyramus) Christiane Tricerri (Titania)

footnotes
References Notes

Thoughts? --Xover (talk) 15:40, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Not a bad start! Is order of appearance the sorting method you’ve adopted? —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 17:56, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

No, it's roughly "importance of role, picked from my fuzzy memory of the play in question". But note that it's the importance of the role, not the fame of the actor (which distinction I feel is important). I've also dropped some actors: for example, listing Andre Braugher (and first, no less) when he was a stage hand and not an actor, is just beautifying the production with borrowed feathers.

But I'm not necessarily married to that approach, and it was a quick draft with little research so it may not even be internally consistent. It's a start, no more. --Xover (talk) 19:56, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Oh, and to add: my reasoning here is that it doubles as selection criteria. Almost all productions of a play will have the same main characters, so listing who played those characters is an easy semi-objective criteria. The alternative, as the Braugher example illustrates, is billing order, where a then unknown actor, who later became famous, in a bit role gets listed but we leave out Othello from Othello. There's some subjectivity on where to draw the line on "main character" (the clowns, like Dogberry, probably being the most obvious borderline case), but it'll generally be an easier line to draw than "which actor is more famouser?" in my experience. --Xover (talk) 20:10, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Highlighting leading roles

I’m following up on the above conversation with a proposal that we keep all actors but use bold text to highlight actors in a role that meets some kind of dry, mathematical criteria for “leading” or “major” role. For a conversation starter, I found this table of roles comprising a least of the quarter of the lines in a play.

Play	Role	Role size (% of lines)
Timon of Athens	Timon	35%
Henry V	Henry V	33%
The Tempest	Prospero	33%
Richard III	Gloucester	32%
Hamlet	Hamlet	32%
Macbeth	Macbeth	31%
Measure for Measure	Vincentio	30%
Edward III	Edward III	30%
Othello	Iago	28%
Titus Andronicus	Titus Andronicus	28%
Julius Caesar	Marcus Brutus	28%
Richard II	Richard II	27%
Othello	Othello	27%
Pericles	Pericles	27%
Coriolanus	Caius Martius	26%
Love's Labour's Lost	Berowne	25%
The Winter's Tale	Leontes	25%
Antony and Cleopatra	Mark Antony	25%

I suspect it would be better to lower the threshold far enough that most plays have a defined leading role, and fraction of the word count is probably better than the fraction of the number of lines in case prose vs verse greatly affects the count. Thoughts are welcome. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 20:55, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

References

I’ve chased down the relevant facts as best I can and done the math. Sure enough, counting by words rather than lines makes a big difference. Hamlet’s portion of the play jumps from 31% in the previous tally to 37% in this one.

In an attempt to define the parameters for inclusion, I began by setting the threshold just low enough to catch Shylock at his 13.0% share of Merchant and then rounded down one eighth (12.5%).

It became evident, though, that a purely numerical criteron (at least as I have established it) leaves much to be desired. Recognizing that, I have greyed-out roles either markedly smaller than the largest role in the same play (Claudius in Hamlet), not a title character in a play with well-represented title characters (Julia in Verona), or part of a cluster around the 12.5% threshold (Belch in Twelfth). Borderline cases like Hotspur in 1 Henry IV have been left in for now.

Role	Lines	Words	Share	Words in play	Play
Hamlet	1506	11735	36.7%	31950	Hamlet
Claudius	552	4102	12.8%	31950	Hamlet
Richard III	1151	8888	28.6%	31084	R3
Coriolanus	675	4830	16.5%	29209	Coriolanus
Menenius Agrippa	578	4297	14.7%	29209	Coriolanus
Posthumus and Cloten	703	5371	19.0%	28780	Cymbeline
Innogen	594	4402	15.3%	28780	Cymbeline
Iago	1088	8431	30.3%	27860	Othello
Othello	880	6251	22.4%	27860	Othello
Falstaff	641	5471	19.8%	27625	H42
Troilus	537	3981	14.5%	27531	T&C
Ulysses	485	3542	12.9%	27531	T&C
Lear	749	5610	20.4%	27507	Lear
Henry V	1031	8344	30.4%	27441	H5
Mark Antony	839	5952	22.5%	26456	A&C
Cleopatra	678	4700	17.8%	26456	A&C
Leontes	686	4890	18.8%	25943	Winter
Edward	428	3475	13.5%	25827	H63
Earl Of Warwick	435	3415	13.2%	25827	H63
Henry VIII	459	3359	13.0%	25811	H8
Romeo	617	4728	18.3%	25783	R&J
Juliet	542	4286	16.6%	25783	R&J
Falstaff	602	5535	21.5%	25715	H41
Hal (Henry V)	572	4376	17.0%	25715	H41
Harry Hotspur	559	4346	16.9%	25715	H41
Palamon	593	4239	16.7%	25424	Kinsmen
Arcite	521	3656	14.4%	25424	Kinsmen
Helena	478	3585	14.7%	24367	Well
Falstaff	438	3653	15.6%	23354	Wives
Richard II	756	6005	25.8%	23291	R2
Berowne	592	4585	20.0%	22881	Labour
Vincentio	847	6547	28.6%	22867	Measure
Isabella	424	3010	13.2%	22867	Measure
Rosalind	685	5727	25.1%	22806	As You
Lord Talbot	406	3124	13.7%	22770	H61
Benedick	430	3762	16.8%	22444	Ado
Portia	574	4604	20.7%	22248	Merchant
Shylock	352	2894	13.0%	22248	Merchant
Petruchio	589	4633	20.9%	22153	Shrew
Katherina	221	1759	7.9%	22153	Shrew
Philip The Bastard	523	4109	18.9%	21698	John
King John	437	3326	15.3%	21698	John
Titus Andronicus	711	5698	26.3%	21628	Titus
Sir Toby Belch	343	2701	12.8%	21147	Twelfth
King Edward III	748	5863	27.9%	21050	E3
Marcus Brutus	721	5391	25.8%	20864	JC
Caius Cassius	508	3739	17.9%	20864	JC
Julius Caesar	151	1128	5.4%	20864	JC
Pericles	602	4577	23.3%	19647	Pericles
Timon	850	6358	32.4%	19628	Timon
Proteus	446	3279	17.9%	18287	Verona
Valentine	391	2825	15.4%	18287	Verona
Julia	322	2428	13.3%	18287	Verona
Macbeth	715	5303	29.1%	18227	Macbeth
Ross	135	2724	14.9%	18227	Macbeth
Prospero	656	4713	27.1%	17409	Tempest
both Antipholuses	503	3840	23.7%	16196	Errors
both Dromios	398	3443	21.3%	16196	Errors
Adriana	263	2099	13.0%	16196	Errors

Xover, I know this isn’t quite the tack you were proposing, but could you opine on this table when you have a moment? I’d be particularly interested in your thoughts on Hotspur and the cast of Errors as sometimes twins are played by a single actor (2013) and sometimes they are not (1967). Cheers —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 16:06, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

References

Not entirely on topic, but how does the end of the play work if they're the same actor? That's fascinating. I played Dromio of Ephesus a long time ago - would have been really interesting and weird to play both of them. Kalethan (talk) 15:22, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Kalethan, the final scene of the 2013 Errors worked by having two members of the ensemble don the Syracusan costumes and turn three-quarters away from the audience so that their non-identicalness wasn’t completely apparent. It was a less-than-perfect bit of staging, and that final scene felt a bit weird, but it was a small price to pay to have enabled two masterful comedic actors to play double roles in all the preceding scenes.

Do you, by any chance, have thoughts on the question I posed to Xover? I have been dragging my heels on the two parts of Henry IV and maybe a couple other plays where the leading roles are less clear cut. —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 00:05, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

@JamesLucas: Well, it seems my response times are getting increasingly lame. Thanks for the ping(s), and apologies for the tardiness.

My first thought on seeing the table was "Which edition of Hamlet?" The table is great research and a good reference, but I am sceptical of using it directly as a bright-line criterion. Number of lines or words spoken is only a rough proxy for a role's importance in Shakespeare's original, and directors have always cut, combined, or expanded roles (Tate's Lear being an obvious example; Q1/Q2 Hamlet probably equally so). Notice also the absence of Lady Macbeth (notably played by Dame Judy Dench for the RSC) in Macbeth, and Constance in King John (with one of the choicer little speeches).

I also think "all actors" is too wide: we're not just amassing data here. One way or another we need to pick out the ones that are micro-notable, and I think editor judgement and talk page consensus is sufficient criterion for that selection. Informed by things like your number-of-words table, but also by whatever other criteria interested editors think relevant.

Regarding the Hotspur, I think he could probably fall above or below the arbitrarily picked threshold depending on the production. His importance to the play is more in being the antagonist, and a setup for the Hal/Falstaff stuff at the end of 1H4. A structural element more than a dramatic character, if you will (I'm exaggerating for rhetorical purposes, of course). Including him in the roles listed only when played by a notable actor would be a prime example of where that approach would shine. Including him always based on the word count would probably lead to some odd cases.

I don't quite see the problem with the Dromios and Antipholuses in Errors. No matter who plays them they are still separate roles, and whether casting twins, a single actor in a double-role, or deliberately casting obviously dissimilar actors (Patrick Stewart and Samuel L. Jackeson, or Danny Devito and Arnold Schwartzenegger, or...) for dramatic purposes is a creative choice by the director (an odd choice for Errors, I suppose, but in principle...). If treating them separately makes them fall below the word-count threshold then, shrug, I think that's just one more unintended effect of trying to use an "objective" bright-line criterion for something like this.

But I've just briefly come back to this after however many years since last I looked, and this article has never been among my main focuses on the project, so it is absolutely possibly I'm talking out of my posterior on this. I'm very sceptical about your proposed approach, but if I can be of assistance in, e.g., assessing edge cases I'm happy to do so. Xover (talk) 14:26, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

​Regarding a cutoff for inclusion, I think erring on the side of excess is important to helping the reader glean how Shakespeare in the Park is both a launchpad for careers and a place veteran actors return to, even for diminishing roles. The 1988 production of King John features both Jane White coming back 28 years after her debut at the Delacorte and Andre Braugher in the ensemble eight years before leading Henry V. These strike me as essential pieces of the picture, and I don’t know how to retain such connections without just throwing the doors open to any actor the Wikipedia community has seen fit to give an article. I acknowledge that the list format provides nothing to highlight those connections for readers, but I take heart in noting that lists are inherently more robust than articles against the distraction of excess so long as the formatting is successful in directing focus. I hope we’re getting there with this list.

As for the two-tier system, I’m not wedded to it, but I feel like it’s mostly working. If there were any true bright line, it would be looking at every performance and seeing who comes out last to the curtain call, but without contemporaneous documentation, that’s a stretch. I’m viewing wordcount as a fallback metric, and there are doubtless intermediate degrees of equanimity that can be attained the better each production is understood.

Your take on Hotspur aligns with mine exactly, which means . . . I don’t know, at least for the short term. I take your point about Errors but note that when the roles are not combined, Adriana is the second largest role. It gets tricky! —jameslucas ^{▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄} 23:21, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Regarding the connections, I feel that's something better dealt with in prose somewhere. Trying to make the list do too much such work is stretching its purpose. Xover (talk) 19:36, 8 August 2023 (UTC)