Midsummer Madness: A Shakesperience

In Midsummer Madness, the WKP cast and audience collaboratively create a unique show each performance, first by selecting that performance’s role assignments a bare five minutes before the performance begins. And for those few frantic minutes, actors will swap scripts, speed-design their costumes, and choosing their props in a race against the clock. 

What can an audience expect? Throughout, the audience will be invited—never forced— to interact with the performance, going from selecting the cast, to spontaneous word-play, or singing a lullaby, or what you will. While the familiar Shakespeare text sets the milestones, the spontaneous devisings of the performers reveal fresh nuance in the relationships among the characters. Everything old will indeed be new again.

WKP’s Shakesperience approach aims to replicate the spontaneous spirit of Elizabethan theatre. In Shakespeare’s time, actors made ALL the creative staging decisions, with perhaps as few as 20 hours of group rehearsal. (There was no “director” per se until the latter half of the 19th century.) And the Elizabethan audience expected to banter with the clowns, sing along with familiar tunes, or be transformed by address into the Roman mob or the English army. By embracing this method, WKP showcases the fluidity and playfulness inherent in Shakespearean performance.

The performance ensemble for Midsummer Madness includes WKP company members Ash Visker, Devin Trager, Imzak Mohamed, Melissa Colasessano, Michael Sinkora, and Phillip Beattie. They are joined by WKP veterans Cameron Richardson and Jack Ellis and WKP newcomer Syl Simmons.
 

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Category: Arts | Performing Arts | Theatre