DG National Report: Kentucky by Nancy Gall-Clayton
@dramatistsguild @nancygall
All the world truly is a stage for Shakespeare’s plays. Each year, the Bard’s work is featured at festivals across the globe. And at least one – the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival – now includes new plays by “community partners.”
Founded in 1949 as Carriage House Players with its first full season in 1961, it is the country’s oldest free Shakespeare festival. It has grown in numerous ways since 2014 when Matt Wallace became producing artistic director. A springtime Shakespeare in the Parks Tour takes 90-minute versions of a summer play (Macbeth this year) to area parks and neighborhoods. Also new is the Bard-a-Thon when, on a single Saturday, all three major summer offerings are performed – this year, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, and Macbeth. New attendance records – over 25,000 – have been set during Wallace’s tenure.
To playwrights, the inclusion of new full-length plays inspired by Shakespeare may be the most exciting addition to the festival. As Wallace explains, “I thought it would be interesting and fun for our audiences to experience a contemporary script exploring Shakespeare and his themes. We hope to gain new audience members in this experience as well, and we’re excited to support these wonderful local companies and playwrights dedicated to new work in our region.”
The Bard’s Town Theatre produced Chasing Ophelia by Dramatists Guild member Doug Schutte in August. Possibly the only play actually written at Shakespeare Globe Theatre, Chasing Ophelia was penned in the early morning hours when Schutte was a Treadwell Fellow at Shakespeare’s Globe in London.
Though definitely a comedy, Chasing Ophelia explores serious questions about identity and relationships as the protagonist travels through time and space meeting Lady Macbeth, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern among others.
“I envisioned an outdoor Globe-like setting for the play and was thrilled to see it performed outdoors for the first time during Kentucky Shakespeare Festival’s 2015 season,” Schutte says. Scot Atkinson, who directed Chasing Ophelia this summer, co-owns The Bard’s Town Theatre with Schutte.
Established in 2010, their theatre has produced over 40 world and regional premieres. Under the same roof is a restaurant with offerings like the Aside Salad, Linguin-Iago, and Corn-Delia. As the website explains, the name of the enterprise honors Shakespeare and the Louisville street, Bardstown Road, where the theatre is located, but also and perhaps most importantly, “The Bards” of today (www.thebardstown.com).
The second community partner at the 2015 Kentucky Shakespeare Festival was Theatre [502], a Louisville-based company founded in 2011 whose focus is producing “recent and relevant” plays. Among the ten plays in its fifth season are five shorts commissioned from local writers and The Two Lobbyists of Verona.
Amy Attaway, [502]’s co-artistic director, explains that although the theatre had nothing appropriate for the big Kentucky Shakespeare stage when invited to participate, “We did have two fantastic playwrights-in-residence.” Thus, Diana Grisanti and Steve Moulds were commissioned to write a script with “lots of characters and big action.”
The year-long development process went smoothly because of Attaway’s previous experience directing for Kentucky Shakespeare and the fact that the three artists collaborate frequently. “We understand each other’s language,” says Attaway, who directed the new work.
Writing something Shakespearean but also modern was a creative challenge. “Ultimately,” says Moulds, “we decided on a hybrid approach – embracing big civic questions that are on the minds of Americans today, but in a world that feels like the theatre of the English renaissance.”
The Two Lobbyists of Verona is a rollicking comedy about whether and how Verona, Kentucky, will recover from a devastating storm. Should the county council allow fracking of newly discovered oil and natural gas deposits, or should it create a World of Will theme park? For more information about Theatre [502], visit www.theatre502.org.
If your state has a Shakespeare festival, why not ask its leaders to invite area theatres to present new Shakespeare-inspired plays in a future season?
Join our Facebook page, Dramatists Guild-Kentucky Region, for more news.
[photo caption: TheTwo Lobbyists of Verona by Diana Grisanti & Steve Moulds, photo by Bill Brymer ]
[photo caption: Chasing Ophelia by Doug Schutte ]