Alumnae Grant Funds New Podcasting Project and Play
Linda Gates, professor of instruction in the Department of Theatre, was awarded last year a 2025-2026 Academic Enrichment grant from the Alumnae of Northwestern for her project “Podcasting Techniques and Skills for the Theatre Performer.”
The grant will bring New York-based British-American actress Marion Sybil Lines, a veteran of screen and stages, Broadway and beyond, to Evanston to coach School of Communication theatre students on how to create character voices within the wide world of British dialects. Additionally, Lines will be joined this month by podcasting director Jeffrey Gardner of Audacious Machine Creative to co-lead a workshop to help actors create podcasts on their phones. Gardner will also assist Gates' students in developing a podcast of Alice in Wonderland and to help with vocal techniques for recording. Gardner's visit was also made possible by the grant. All podcast recoding till take place in SoC's new Caryl Bristol Kushner Podcast Studio Lab.
Out of the studio, Lines will extend her stay in Evanston to join Gates onstage in the one-night run of her play The Thistle and The Rose on Wednesday, February 18 at 7:30 p.m., in the Mussetter-Struble Theater in the Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts.
Gates and Lines performed the play last August at the famed Edinburgh Festival Fringe to sold-out houses and rave reviews.
The upcoming show will be followed by a talkback featuring guest scholar Carole Levin, the Willa Cather Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Nebraska. This portion of events is also supported by the Alumnae.
More about The Thistle and The Rose:
The Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts announces a special performance of The Thistle and the Rose: Two Queens in One Isle, an acclaimed two‑actor play by Linda Gates exploring the fierce, intimate, and world‑shaping rivalry between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. The production will be presented at The Struble Theatre on February 18, 2026 at 7:30 PM.
Adapted from the queens’ own letters, poems, and writings—drawn from the Calendar of State Papers of England and Scotland—the play illuminates a 27‑year relationship marked by political maneuvering, personal longing, and the struggle for power that altered the course of history.
A Story Told in Their Own Words
The Thistle and the Rose begins with Mary’s first letter to Elizabeth as she prepares to leave France to claim her Scottish throne. Through decades of correspondence—originally written in French and translated by Elizabeth’s secretaries—the two monarchs reveal their hopes, fears, alliances, betrayals, and ultimately the fatal conflict that ended with Mary’s execution.
The newly revised 2025 edition of the play incorporates groundbreaking scholarship following the 2023 discovery and decoding of Mary’s cipher letters in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Under the editorship of Basia Kapolka of the Northwestern University Library, Gates expanded the script with a new prologue and epilogue set in Westminster Abbey beside the queens’ tombs.
Acclaimed Performers Bring History to Life
The production reunites the original cast:
Marion Sybil Lines as Mary, Queen of Scots: A graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Lines has performed leading roles across the UK and with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, London, and Japan. Her U.S. credits include Broadway, Off‑Broadway, and major Shakespeare festivals including Washington D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre, the Folger Theatre, Orlando‑UCF Shakespeare Festival, and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.
Linda Gates as Elizabeth I: A classically trained American actress and specialist in Shakespearean text, Gates has worked in New York, Europe, and regional theaters across the U.S. She is a member of the Acting faculty at Northwestern University and an Associate Artist with the Prague Shakespeare Company.
About the Play’s Origins
Originally developed as part of Linda Gates’s MA thesis at New York University, the play has been performed in New York, Chicago, the Orlando Shakespeare Festival, and at Oxburgh Castle in Norfolk. Its 2025 revival and publication were inspired by the rediscovery of Mary’s cipher letters—offering fresh insight into one of history’s most consequential rivalries.
Performance Information
The Thistle and the Rose: Two Queens in One Isle
February 18, 2026 — 7:30 PM
The Mussetter-Struble Theatre, Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts
Northwestern University