Shakespeare & Co. Premieres Comic Guide to the Bard10:01AM / Tuesday, August 04, 2009
LENOX, Mass. — Shakespeare & Company's free Outdoor Bankside Festival invites all ages to the tented Rose Footprint for the world premiere of a funny guide to the Bard's work and times, "Wordplay: A New Play By William Shakespeare." Resident music director Bill Barclay directs.
Free tickets must be reserved through the box office at 413-637-3353 or at www.shakespeare.org.
"Wordplay" runs Tuesdays and Sundays at 12:30 p.m. and Thursdays at 5:30 p.m., joining the Rose Footprint repertory alongside "Toad of Toad Hall" by A. A. Milne. The freshly imagined romp through Shakespeare's work as seen through the personalities of Lord Chamberlain's Men, The Bard's theater company. Wordplay is written by performance intern program participants Tom O'Keefe and Nathan Wolfe Coleman.
The play frames some of Shakespeare's best-loved scenes with a connecting story — the antics of The Bard's theater company as it tries to mount a play called "Wordplay."
"It's a farcical look at what it was like back then to put up these plays," Barclay said. "It's all sourced in factual evidence about Shakespeare's fellow actors, and how unruly, off-the-cuff, spontaneous and collaborative the company actually was.”
Wordplay includes scenes from "Richard III," "Romeo and Juliet," "Taming of the Shrew" and "The Tempest" among others. Along the way, the adventure seems equally informed by "Waiting For Godot" and "Waiting For Guffman."
It features the 10 young actors in the 15-week actor training residency: Nathan Wolfe Coleman, Emily Hagburg, Ross Hurwitz, Emily Karol, Poornima Kirby, Tom O'Keefe, Gabe Portuondo, Alison Novelli, Aaron Sharff and Mike Thomas
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