Shakespeare in the Dark
Dunkirk NY – This week has been a beautiful week weatherwise. The temperatures have been pleasantly warm by day and cool at night. It has made working at Shakespeare in Delaware Park very delightful. The numbers of people on the hill each night has been getting larger and larger, and it’s quite fun to see.
It’s also been the busiest week of the summer for me. This past week was the week that working summer orientation getting classes for incoming freshmen combined with working evenings at the park. I find this year I have not been as exhausted as I was last summer, and that has been a relief. I believe my protein shake regimen has made a significant difference, as well as the fact that Leonato is not as physical a role as Sebastian was last year. They have been pretty full, active days, however, and it’s fair to say I have been tired, but not so supremely exhausted that I cannot face the next day. Today is the last show of this week, as we do not perform on July 4th, so I have two days off from the show and only one orientation later in the week. Plenty of time to recover, and as this is the last week of the show it should not be as intense as this past week was.
The show itself has been pleasant to perform. One thing I am experiencing once again about working at the park is that it is about more than just the show. SDP is really a total experience, and in many ways the quality of the show is not the point at all. In this production of Much Ado the director has mixed popular tunes from the 40s into the fabric of the show, and so you have a pleasant little love comedy competently performed with the songs nicely sung. Mix that with a gentle summer evening, a picnic dinner and/or snacks, a bottle or two of wine, a park setting with a lake in the background, a beautiful sunset, and you have more than an evening at the theatre – you have an experience in which the show itself is only one of the many elements.
This is not to say that the show itself is not good; much of it is good. But it certainly does not break any significant artistic ground, and there is no attempt to do more with the show than it can handle. The comedy is there, along with the two or three dramatic scenes that comprise the heart of the Hero/Claudio subplot. Audiences are enjoying the show because it is entertaining, and the setting makes it all the more enjoyable. And that’s it.
Despite that, I find for myself personally that getting in the car, commuting the hour up there, doing the show, and commuting back home has that “been there done that” feel to it. I can’t call it an active dislike, and I think that if I lived ten minutes from the park I would feel completely different about the situation. But I have to say in all honestly that the idea of sitting on my back porch on these delightful evenings, sipping a beer or some lemonade, and listening to a ball game, sounds much more appealing. Right n0w I am in fact sitting on my back porch writing this while listening t0 the Yankees play the Blue Jays. That’s pleasant as well. I guess at the moment I should consider myself a very lucky guy, with so much pleasantry to choose from. -twl
