All the World’s a Stage

I have been working in Theatre for about 40 years and I have worked on less than a dozen full productions of Shakespeare’s plays.

Loves Labor Lost

The Merry Wives of Windsor

Richard II

Richard III

A Midsummer’s Night Dream (twice)

Much Ado About Nothing

As You Like It

Romeo and Juliet

Twelfth Night

In addition I worked on the musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona and Bride of Shakespeare Heaven, a compilation of monologues and scenes cut and pasted together into a show.

Seems to me that I should have done more of Shakespeare’s plays but they typically have large casts and are more costly to do.

The plays can cost as much as musicals to produce but do not often draw as large of an audience.

Public schools have cut back on field trips and we no longer do as many school matinees as we have done in the past. 

The final play of my third year at Brockport was a production of As You Like It.

We did our usual six performance plus three school matinees, or as many Theatre veterans call them: Creature Features!

To begin with school matinees start early in morning, 10 AM is an average start time, plus the kids are often noisy, rude and have been known to throw things at the actors.

We had to stop a performance of The Diary of Anne Frank and move some students to the back because they were tossing candy at the actors on stage.

This may seem extreme but I remember seeing a film of an early Beatles concert where the girls in the audience were throwing jelly beans on stage because they wanted to “Touch” them.

I our case the kids wanted to mess up the actors and that school was banned from future productions.

As You Like It  was the last play of the school year and the last play for our Lighting Design teacher who was leaving at the end of May.

Like most of Shakespeare’s works the play called for multiple scenes jumping from Court of Duke Frederick to the Forest of Arden.

It is a fun play with lots of action with characters running through the woods, wrestling in the court and women disguised as men.

It also has one of the most quoted speeches from Shakespeare,

no not To Be or Not To Be,

but the following:

JAQUES: All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. 

The set was fun to build and I enjoyed the forest scene the most.

We had three layers of trees starting with real trees onstage with cutout trees behind them and finally upstage was a painted drop with even more trees.

The first forest scene starts in the Winter and we had special trees and bushes that had spray snow on them and we had white foam peanuts on the ground for snow.

At the next scene change the crew ran out to pick up the snow and turn and the bushes around so the spring flower side would show.

A few nights there was little snow showing but it still looked good.

During the recent building renovation I found that we still had the May Pole that was used in the last scene of the play but after 27 years the ribbons were faded and a bit dirty.

I got to paint some of the set and remember that I had a good time working on the show.

After it was done and school ended I would have a few weeks off and then start working on our two summer shows.

With the departure of the Lighting Design teacher and with my taking over most of his duties I was not sure what was in store for me ahead in the coming school year, but for the first summer production we had an outside Lighting Designer.

Flying up next is Peter Pan.