Stephano on Rhode Island PBS
Public media’s Mayflower documentary broadcast premiere slated for January
A pandemic may have pushed off events for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower until 2021, but the New Year will kick off with a new story on the airwaves. January will see the first broadcast of Hit and Run History’s Stephano: The True Story of Shakespeare’s Shipwreck on Rhode Island PBS.
Two-time Emmy-nominated producer Andrew Giles Buckley and his crew are hot on the trail of Stephen Hopkins, a Virginia-bound castaway who found his way not only onto the decks of the Mayflower a decade later, but immortalized on stage as the drunken Stephano in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
The 90-minute film follows the story of the only Mayflower passenger who had been to North America previously. A decade earlier, Hopkins was aboard a Jamestown-bound ship whose wreck on Bermuda inspired the Bard’s final play. Shot on location, the intrepid Hit and Run History team retraces Hopkins’ life crisscrossing the Atlantic, intersecting with the likes of Pocahontas and Squanto.
Buckley, a Hopkins descendant, grew up hearing stories that New Plymouth’s iconoclast tavern keeper may have the model of The Tempest’s drunken and mutinous Stephano. In their Gumshoe Historian style, Hit and Run History seeks out the reality of a man who was everywhere at the founding of America.
Stephano will air on Rhode Island PBS’s WSBE on January 15 at 8 PM, January 16 at noon, January 19 at noon, and January 20 at 1 AM.
Stephano is the first joint production of the Cape Media Center, southeastern Massachusetts’ largest public access station, and Rhode Island PBS. This will be the first full-length broadcast of a Hit and Run History show, prior segments having been aired interstitially on Rhode Island PBS and featured on WGBH’s History website.
Hit and Run History was awarded a pre-production grant for Stephano by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, and 21 Cultural Council Grants from communities across Massachusetts to hold local screenings in 2020. Post-production funding was raised through crowdsourcing and support from Cape Air.