Shakespeare outdoors: T2 tours area with 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
Posted on Friday, July 18, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/WhatsUp/67265/
As the saying goes, there is a first for everything.
With the upcoming production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," TheatreSquared is facing a lot of new challenges.
It's outdoors.
It's touring.
It's Shakespeare.
TheatreSquared, which has normally produced plays indoors in its home base of Fayetteville, will debut its traveling version of the Shakespeare comedy at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Eureka Spring's Basin Spring Park. Following another performance there on Sunday, the production will head to Blowing Springs Park in Bella Vista on Thursday and July 26 and the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks in Fayetteville on July 25 and 27.
"We bit off a lot with this one," said Robert Ford, TheatreSquared's artistic director. "We're really excited. ... We don't know where it's going to lead."
Ford said the idea was sparked when representatives of the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks in Fayetteville approached TheatreSquared about staging a Shakespeare production at its garden. In order to support this kind of production, Ford said he knew TheatreSquared needed to get other venues interested, which it was able to do.
But that wasn't half of it.
"The biggest challenge for us is dealing with the outdoors and all of the things you can't control," he said.
For example, there's the sound and set. Indoors, that isn't a problem, Ford said. Outdoors, however, it means actors must project their voices more than they normally would.
The play will be staged with six actors -- Jenna Kirk, Jenny Guy, Virginia Scheuer, Kristopher Stoker, William O'Bryan and Rex Austin Barrow -- who must take on at least two roles each. All are graduates of the University of Arkansas' drama program and experienced in Shakespeare, Ford said. Michael Hogwood is directing the play.
"A Midsummer Night's Dream," Ford said, consists of two intertwining love stories that "totally plays with what it means to fall in love and the chemical attraction between two people."
"These two things are so universal," he said. "It immediately grabs an audience."
Ford said TheatreSquared did some careful editing in its adaptation of the play.
"In this case, we have reduced it by half, so you're automatically messing with Shakespeare in that way," he said. "We're playing with Shakespeare but in a way that makes Shakespeare work."
While the dialogue will be in the style that Shakespeare wrote it some 400 years ago, the physical aspects are contemporary. For example, at one point during rehearsal, the characters experimented with tossing a Frisbee around in one of the scenes, which could make its way into the production, Ford said.
"Shakespeare plops down in all sorts of versions all over the country and we want to see what way it lives in Northwest Arkansas best," he said.
For John Merritt of Eureka Springs, he hopes it will lead to an annual outdoor Shakespeare festival for the town -- especially after a Google search revealed that there are no regular Shakespeare festivals in Arkansas. He is, no pun intended, spearheading such an event and said he already has sponsors.
"I believe there is something quite transformative about experiencing a live Shakespeare performance outside in a pleasant park setting, especially in the evening," Merritt said. "Half the fun is staking out your own personal space with blankets, lawn chairs and picnic baskets to relax in anticipation while waiting for twilight to fade and the stage lights to go up. The other aspect I feel is critical is having the venue located centrally so that it feeds on and contributes to the energy and vitality of the Eureka Springs urban experience."