All photos courtesy of Louisa Vilardi Photography.
Director's Note:
Good evening! I would like to acknowledge that my work is taking place along the Mahincantuck river on the unceded lands of the Mohican, the Schaghticoke, and the Munsee Lenape whose tribe, the Wappinger, provides this town’s name. I honor these nations of the past, present, and future.
***
The theatre where Shakespeare and his company, The King’s Men did most of their performing was fittingly called The Globe. Fitting because of the cylindrical shape that Shakespeare himself referred to as “this wooden O” but also because of what the architecture brought out of the storytelling. Shakespeare was a master of the aside, a device in which one character steps out of the scene they are in and directly addresses the audience about the other characters onstage. What makes the aside important at The Globe is that Shakespeare never separated the actor from the audience*. In fact, since the Globe’s performances took place outside in the daylight, the audience was as visible as the actors themselves. Therefore, using the aside, Shakespeare acknowledged that the viewer was not only a part of the story, they were the story itself. The wooden O and the plays within it were a monument to the collective journey; they were about all of us in The Globe and on the globe.
How appropriate then that when Shakespeare died, his two close friends and fellow company members decided to take an unprecedented step to preserve his legacy. They took these plays that were traditionally withheld by the companies that performed them and immortalized them in an endless aside where Shakespeare could directly speak to humanity throughout the rest of time. In this resounding reverberation from the original wooden O, the First Folio has invited all of us who have seen or read a Shakespeare play to sit among a global community over 400 years old.
Tonight, this live historical fiction about Shakespeare’s artistic community is presented to you, the County Players community, by the County Players community. Devices traditionally used to set the actors apart from the audience (accents, traditional costumes) have been lessened or stripped away entirely so that we may never forget that we all take part in this ever-evolving story.
Since a majority of this play takes place in the tap house at The Globe Theatre, I think it best to finish this note with a toast from the Bard himself, “I drink to the general joy of the whole table.” Thank you for supporting live theatre. Enjoy the show!
*It must be acknowledged that it was illegal for women to act professionally in Elizabethan England and therefore to state that there was "no separation" must be qualified because of the gendered, gate-keeping separation throughout the entire practice.
Good evening! I would like to acknowledge that my work is taking place along the Mahincantuck river on the unceded lands of the Mohican, the Schaghticoke, and the Munsee Lenape whose tribe, the Wappinger, provides this town’s name. I honor these nations of the past, present, and future.
***
The theatre where Shakespeare and his company, The King’s Men did most of their performing was fittingly called The Globe. Fitting because of the cylindrical shape that Shakespeare himself referred to as “this wooden O” but also because of what the architecture brought out of the storytelling. Shakespeare was a master of the aside, a device in which one character steps out of the scene they are in and directly addresses the audience about the other characters onstage. What makes the aside important at The Globe is that Shakespeare never separated the actor from the audience*. In fact, since the Globe’s performances took place outside in the daylight, the audience was as visible as the actors themselves. Therefore, using the aside, Shakespeare acknowledged that the viewer was not only a part of the story, they were the story itself. The wooden O and the plays within it were a monument to the collective journey; they were about all of us in The Globe and on the globe.
How appropriate then that when Shakespeare died, his two close friends and fellow company members decided to take an unprecedented step to preserve his legacy. They took these plays that were traditionally withheld by the companies that performed them and immortalized them in an endless aside where Shakespeare could directly speak to humanity throughout the rest of time. In this resounding reverberation from the original wooden O, the First Folio has invited all of us who have seen or read a Shakespeare play to sit among a global community over 400 years old.
Tonight, this live historical fiction about Shakespeare’s artistic community is presented to you, the County Players community, by the County Players community. Devices traditionally used to set the actors apart from the audience (accents, traditional costumes) have been lessened or stripped away entirely so that we may never forget that we all take part in this ever-evolving story.
Since a majority of this play takes place in the tap house at The Globe Theatre, I think it best to finish this note with a toast from the Bard himself, “I drink to the general joy of the whole table.” Thank you for supporting live theatre. Enjoy the show!
*It must be acknowledged that it was illegal for women to act professionally in Elizabethan England and therefore to state that there was "no separation" must be qualified because of the gendered, gate-keeping separation throughout the entire practice.
