Shakespeare in the Park

SAVE THE DATE!
 

Shakespeare in the Park: Much Adoe About Nothing
Saturday, August 13 | 7 PM | Veterans Park, Sherwood
 

Join us for FREE Shakespeare in the Park – in the heart of Sherwood at Veterans Park. Bring blankets, lawn chairs, and picnic dinners for this one-of-a-kind experience, with skilled actors from Original Practice Shakespeare (OPS Fest). Concessions will be available from Morback House/Sherwood Historical Society.

About Original Practice Shakespeare: First Folio editions of Shakespeare's plays include all the cues an actor needs to perform his or her part without rehearsal. This allows the truest reaction to the story as it progresses. OPS Fest performs using the same techniques as they did in Shakespeare's own time, which means limited rehearsal; an onstage prompter; fast paced, energetic acting; and lots of audience interaction. This lends a much more immediate, organic and improvisational feel to the performances. 

We know that, in Shakespeare's day, plays were not performed for weeks at a time. Shakespeare's actors performed ten to twelve different plays in any fortnight, and never performed the same play on two consecutive days. If a play was a hit it might return three times within a month; but meanwhile, to fill the theater, there had to be  a different play performed every day. A modern company might produce five to eight plays in a season; Shakespeare's actors exceeded that by a factor of ten or twenty. When in the world could they have rehearsed all these plays? 

The answer is that they did not. They prepared their "roles" (rolled cue scripts) on their own time,  met together on the morning of a show, choreographed fights and music and dance, and performed that afternoon. By all accounts, the performances were magnificent— otherwise, the plays would not have survived.

You might observe, modern actors are not used to performing without rehearsal. How do we make great performances happen? The answer is twofold. First of all, we prepare. Before our season starts, our actors train in the methods Shakespeare's actors used. Then we subject every line, nearly every word, to a rigorous process of unearthing meanings and stage directions. By the time the actor gets to the stage, s/he is able to live his or her part as convincingly, we hope, as those of Shakespeare's own company would have.

Next, and perhaps most importantly, we trust Shakespeare's texts to provide all the information we need to play well. We know that his actors were far more like our professional athletes than like our actors: they knew the rules and were virtuosos at PLAYING, whatever the situation of the moment. Audiences had to be lured from the bear-baiting and brothels down the street; Shakespeare wrote fun, bawdy, outrageous popular entertainments for the masses (that also happen to have astounding poetry), and the masses came to participate in every play--think Seahawks, not PCS. When we play Shakespeare, we play.  More info: @onlyatOPS on Instagram

The plot in a very tiny nutshell: The Prince visits Leonato with his evil brother John. Beatrice and Benedick feud. Claudio plans to marry Hero. Folks gull Beatrice and Benedick into thinking the other loves him/her. John makes Hero appear unfaithful. Claudio spurns her at the alter. Hero fakes her death. John's plot is revealed. Everybody marries.