Image via Free Shakespeare in the Park / Facebook
Each summer since 2010, Milwaukee’s Optimist Theatre has presented free, professional, outdoor Shakespeare productions. For years, their stage has been the Peck Pavilion at the Marcus Performing Arts Center. With last summer’s lockdown, the company turned Shakespeare’s adventure drama Pericles into a free web series, with episodes filmed at outdoor sites all over the city. The creative excitement of that, and the deepened connection the company felt to the whole of their hometown, has inspired a new format: live Shakespeare performed in outdoor settings across the whole of Greater Milwaukee.
This summer’s show, free as always, is titled A Midsummer Night’s Dream: the Lovers’ Tale. It’s a 75-minute telling of the heart of Shakespeare’s comic fairytale. The lovers are the focus: four teenagers in flight in a forest are caught in the spells of fairies. The script was crafted by the company’s longstanding dramaturg M. L. Cogar, who is also directing. The language and story is Shakespeare’s.
“We usually do a whole Shakespeare play,” says co-founder and Executive Director Susan Scott Fry. “We’ll dramaturg it down to 2 ½ hours or less. But when you try to do that to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the temptation is to just make all the lines shorter and the lovers really get short shrift, because they have some of the most wonderful poetry. So we opted to just pick their storyline. It’s the lovers, and Oberon and Puck messing with them, and it’s hysterical.”
Real, Complex Relationships
What makes it work? “We’re able to really look at who these people are as human beings,” she answers. “You don’t get to dig in this much when you have a cast of twenty-something. It’s easy to make the lovers broad strokes. But their relationships—with themselves and each with each—are real and complex. It’s about things we all experience as human beings, and that turn into comedy when taken to these kinds of extremes by young people making really poor decisions and believing they’re right. The fairies have fun at the humans’ expense because they’re not human. And after the fun, they fix it all back. The sun’s coming up and we’ve laughed at them enough.”
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She emphasizes that the show is for all ages. “It’s not ‘bring the kids and bring a book.’ The kids will enjoy this, but it’s a grown-up show.”
The company aims to reach as many people as possible. “We’re going to some neighborhoods where the population is very artsy, and some where there are no arts at all. It’s not that we’re being magnanimous. It’s that we want to go to your backyard. We have this cool thing. We’re going to set up and hope that you think it’s cool, too, getting this experience of theatre.”
Inclusive Cast
Optimist Theatre was a supporter of the new Milwaukee Diversity General Auditions and has assembled an inclusive seven-actor cast. Susie Duecker, Rebecca Farr, Fabian Guerrero and King Hang play the lovers. Tom Reed is dad, Seth Hale is the fairy king, and his henchfairy Puck is a woman, Libby Amato.
Scott Fry is eloquent on the hot-button subject of inclusivity. “It’s important for us to actively create a blended cast, because the voices in the play should reflect an amalgam of everybody’s experiences and perspectives. It’s not asking someone who is not white to integrate themselves into white culture by becoming a white person. We want our audience to see that our cast is all kinds of folks bringing their different life experiences to the play. It informs how each actor tells their piece of the story, how they become that character.”
“I love that to be a non-issue and yet an issue,” Scott Fry continues. “That’s the balance everybody is trying to strike. Can we have a nice diversity of ethnicities and cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, and ignore that not everybody looks the same? Well no, you can’t. It’s right there. You have to actively embrace what you have cast that actor to bring, and create good theatre.”
She sees touring as the company’s future, perhaps year-round with indoor performances in schools and art centers. The company has purchased street festival style stage platforms, high quality sound equipment and a power generator. As at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, all performances are matinees with lighting by the sun. “Bring a lawn chair,” she advises, “or a blanket, sunscreen, bug spray, a bottle of water. It’s only 75 minutes, so you’re going to be fine.”
Performances begin July 24-25 at Alverno College, then travel to Greendale Park, Lincoln Park, Washington Park, Humboldt Park, the St. Ann Center, the Sharon Lynn Wilson Center, the Marcus PAC lawn and the 53rd Street School baseball diamond. They finish on Labor Day Weekend at the Bristol Renaissance Faire. Additional sites may be added. Visit FreeShakespeareInThePark.org for details.
