In the past month, I have seen four outdoor productions of Shakespeare. The crazier thing is that only one of them was in Toronto. I also saw a non-Shakespeare outdoor production, and a site-specific wandering production (in an abandoned storefront). [Sidebar: I’ve also seen a bunch of stuff at the Thousand Islands Playhouse (since I work here) but that’s not really what this piece is about.]
I saw both pieces at the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival in Prescott—Romeo and Juliet and Comedy of Errors. Romeo and Juliet was performed brilliantly under a torrential downpour. At one point, they paused the show for the audience to stand under the shelter of the gazebo stage, in hopes that the rain would pass (as Google seemed to suggest). It did pass, and the show resumed. About five minutes later, the really aggressive downpour began, but the actors play until there’s lightning, and so the show went on. I was there largely because I had friends in the cast, but also to support a company that is doing great work. Yet despite the torrential rains, I was not alone in sticking it out to watch this wet-t-shirt-contest of a Shakespeare. Many people stayed. Post-rain, it turned into bug-pocalypse, and still they stayed (while I reapplied my DEET).
Comedy of Errors was significantly adapted (and musicalized!) by Rona Waddington, with music by Melissa Morris. Again, the performances were outstanding. I thought the adaptation was very clever, but I didn’t love all aspects of it. I was likely the only person in the audience who felt that way. It was a packed house, and people were rolling with laughter, engrossed in every moment of SHAKESPEARE before them. Including the 7 year old beside me. Engrossed. Now it didn’t rain for this performance, but the bugs were still pretty intense.
I saw Driftwood Theatre’s production of Hamlet while they were in Trenton. I was celebrating the birthday of my good friend (and their Playwright-in-Residence) Briana Brown, so we got some pizza and got seated on my blanket to watch this incredibly diverse and highly inventive production in the round. Just to be clear, I got to eat pizza during Hamlet (which is an awesome thing). And I wasn’t the only one. We were, however, two of the few who had decided to sit on the west-facing side of the stage because it was less packed. This terrible choice meant that I literally stared at the sun for much of the first half. Paolo Santalucia had an actual sun halo around him. I left squinty, but happy I had seen the production.
Finally, I saw Shakespeare in the Ruff’s inventive production of Macbeth with puppets in Withrow Park last weekend. This was an incredible adaptation, with more grunts and groans than Shakespearean text, but the impact was huge and the story was beautifully told. [Sidebar: This production closes tomorrow and you should really do yourself a favour and see it.] Again, an enormous audience packed into a corner of a park to see some Shakespeare like never before. With this piece, the puppets were the draw, but I was most affected by the inclusion of a fully-costumed and integrated community choir—people of all sizes and backgrounds and ages and abilities who provided the soundtrack for this puppet epic. It was truly theatre for the people of that community, by the people of that community, but with a respect for and an understanding of what professional artists can do to imagine a work in a totally new way.
Like many theatre artists, I am constantly thinking about the way that communities access the arts. When I am making work, I actively consider who the work is for; what I am saying with my work is only important if it reaches those who I wish to say it to. So upon seeing these works, and having an experience that is unlike most traditional theatre experiences, I began to question what makes outdoor work, and particularly outdoor Shakespeare, some sort of shared tradition. I also began thinking about why I stayed, and why others stayed, despite the rain and the bugs and the sun and the discomfort. I also wondered why it all felt so good.
I grew up in Kingston, where there is no tradition of outdoor Shakespeare. The current interest in site-specific and/or environmental work has meant that Kingston is now a hot-bed of non-traditional performance venues, but when I was growing up, the arts community was largely limited to community theatre productions done in buildings. Apart from that, I saw professional work at the Thousand Islands Playhouse (where I now work), but in our 33 year history here, we have only produced two Shakespearean works. So why does this Shakespeare-under-the-stars feel so familiar? Why do we huddle outdoors under blankets and umbrellas and bugspray in order to watch plays that are 400 years old? Why do we do this across the world? Why do we continue to reinvent these plays in new ways, applying all kinds of different artistic pedagogy to them? Why is it that audiences who don’t generally see theatre will come out in droves for this kind of an experience?
I won’t pretend to have the answer—because I so obviously don’t. I don’t know if there is an answer. But I do know that it’s about community. It’s about making work that people feel ownership over. It’s about allowing that work to live and breathe in its community at this time and for these people… even if the text is crazy old. It’s about sharing stories with one another, and allowing those stories to change us and reflect our lives. People stuck around in all of these less-than-comfortable viewing experiences because they were actively participating in what they were experiencing. They weren’t watching theatre, they were engaging with their community. That’s a big difference, an important one, and one that makes me think a lot about how and why we choose to make the work we make.
So I guess my next question is about how we can do this without the imposition of colonial plays from 400 years ago. Can we still draw an audience with stories that are less familiar and maybe more relevant? Can we tell our stories to our communities with the same effect? I don’t know, but it might be fun to try.