Ron Scot Fry is probably best known for spearheading Milwaukee’s annual Shakespeare in the Park, but his life is made up of a series of ongoing projects that dodge and weave around his hectic schedule. A multifaceted performer and theater creator, his days are filled with the hands-on work of telling stories. His résumé lists credits as artistic director of Optimist Theatre, associate artistic director of Milwaukee Public Theatre (MPT), university professor with Carthage College and Alverno College and star of his one-man show on Shakespeare’s life and times.
What does an average day look like for you?
I’ve spent my entire professional life trying to avoid average days. Yesterday I was up at 5:30 a.m. traveling to Nicolet High School to do my one-man show To Be! Shakespeare Here and Now. I did three one-hour versions of To Be, drove back, changed my clothes, answered email, communicated with MPT about this weekend’s conference, went to the shop and spent the rest of the day building a set for Theatre Gigante’s upcoming show and got home about a quarter to 11. That’s not an average day, but that was yesterday.
Tell me a little about your recent show with Milwaukee Public Theatre, Stories from the Medicine Wheel, and the intent of that story cycle.
When I first heard about the project I thought, “This is great. I love the stories from the different Native American nations. I’ve heard them since I was a kid; I’ve always been fascinated by them.” So in my naiveté at the time, my goal was to find some stories from each of the seasons, each of the directions and include four Wisconsin nations. That first goal still exists, but now the real goal is to achieve a greater understanding of the importance of these stories and to try to find a way to honor those traditions and the nations that they come from. Writers and directors are a conduit through which meaning flows, but never, in my experience, more than this. We’re always learning new things and getting new perspectives. The draft of the script we ended up using was, I think, the eighth draft. It changed a lot during the rehearsal process.
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You’re directing for Shakespeare in the Park this year. Talk about that.
Creatively the project is more fun than I had imagined it could be. We’re setting the play during the Summer of Love, and using the social upheaval and discoveries as inspiration for the way that we define the different worlds in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. If anyone who reads this knows where we can get our hands on a 1960s VW minivan, please call me. One of the things I like the most is that all of the artists involved are focused first on telling the story and letting the characters speak. A lot of our audiences are seeing Shakespeare for the first time; some are seeing live theater for the first time. So it’s really important to us that they have a good experience. One of the ways that we can ensure that is to focus on clear, meaningful storytelling. If we can pull an audience together from all different parts of the city, join each other and share the experience of this play, find a stronger connection to each other, and find a very real connection to how magic the city of Milwaukee is in the summertime, it will definitely be worthwhile.
So the name, Optimist, is partly about the future of a city.
It’s very handy. If a huge part of your mission statement is in the name of your company, you can’t help but think in some of those terms while you’re doing the work you do that day.
What’s next?
I really am looking forward to the process of putting together A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Getting into rehearsals, having more meetings with the designers, getting to know the text better. It’s been a fight to find time to focus on it and now I’ll be able to find that time more easily and I’m really excited about it. There are some instances in which I need to work on long-term planning so projects like Shakespeare in the Park and Stories from the Medicine Wheel can happen, but by nature I’m a little more comfortable with chaos and discovery.
For more information on Fry’s upcoming summer of theater work, visit Optimist Theatre’s website, optimisttheatre.org.
