“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date,” Shakespeare once
wrote.
Luckily for theater lovers in Sebastopol and its environs,
summer will linger a little longer this year. The Sebastopol
Shakespeare Festival opens tomorrow (Friday, July 10) and lasts all
the way until October.
First on the slate is the Sonoma County Repertory Theater’s
production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the fanciful romantic
comedy that has long been a staple of summer festivals. With a
classic love story and a cast of fairies who wreak mischievous
magic and harness the power of dreams, “Midsummer” features Rep
favorites Mary Gannon Graham and Eric Thompson and runs through
July 26.
It will be followed by the Bay Area premiere of Ken Ludwig’s
“The Three Musketeers,” which runs Aug. 14 to 26. Ludwig adapted
Alexandre Dumas’ beloved swashbuckling adventure tale in a fresh
new family-oriented production.
Rounding out the Rep’s festival is the worldwide premiere of a
new adaptation of “The Tempest,” Shakespeare’s story of power,
hope, and redemption set on a shipwrecked island. The production
takes the festival into the fall.
“This year we’re actually kind of extending (the festival) to
our indoor production,” said Artistic Director Scott Phillips.
“It’s a collaboration with the Independent Eye, a Sebastopol
company, and they are re-envisioning ‘The Tempest’ with digital
media and a new aural score with three-quarter life-size
puppets.”
Directed and designed by Conrad Bishop with music by Elizabeth
Fuller, “The Tempest” will feature live theatrical animation,
masks, shadow work and an original score.
“This project brought together our experience in producing
‘Macbeth’ with puppets in a show that was in our touring repertory
over 16 years, and our staging of ‘The Winter’s Tale’ with a
theater in Pennsylvania that waked our interest in Shakespeare’s
beautiful late plays of forgiveness and redemption,” said
Bishop.
He added, “It’s interesting, incidentally, that this production,
being at the Rep’s theater, stands in the same relation to the
summer festival as Shakespeare’s second theatre, the Blackfriars,
did to the Globe — the latter a large open-air stage, the
Blackfriars a smaller, more intimate indoor theatre where ‘The
Tempest’ was most likely first performed.”
After its run at the Rep, “The Tempest” will continue playing in
area schools as part of the Shakespeare for a New Generation
program. The Rep is among 37 arts organizations nationwide selected
for this year’s program, run by the National Endowment for the
Arts. Since 2003, the program has been bringing professional
theater productions of Shakespeare’s work to small and midsize
communities around the country. Productions are accompanied by
related educational activities that bring the Bard’s work alive for
students outside major urban areas.
Thanks to a $25,000 grant, 3,000 students in 10 Sonoma County
middle and high schools will soon benefit from low-cost
performances, study guides, workshops, post-show discussions and
artist residencies, courtesy of the Rep Theater.
“‘The Tempest’ is about hopes of renewal in a very nasty world,
and every scene is full of amazed discovery,” Bishop remarked. “For
us, that’s what youth is all about.”
All performances of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Three
Musketeers” begin at 7 p.m. in Ives Park, 7400 Willow St. in
Sebastopol. The park opens at 5:30 p.m. for picnicking (and
brushing up on your lines, if you like to follow along). Tickets
begin at $23 for general admission; seniors and students are $18,
and children 12 and under are free. Thursdays are “pay what you
can” night.
“The Tempest” will play at the Rep’s indoor theater in downtown
Sebastopol from September 18 through October 18.
For more information, contact the Rep at 823-0177 or visit
www.the-rep.com.
