August 11, 1993
MAKING SHAKESPEARE FUN AND FAST
By Jonathan Dube
HARRISONBURG, VA. -- THE LIGHTS in the theater are on. Pompey has invited not just the Romans to his Bacchanalian fest, but the entire audience as well.
A musician strums "Louie, Louie" on guitar as servants pass out drinks to soldiers and audience members. Then the Romans start singing and grab 10 spectators for a dance.
Believe it or not, this is Shakespeare. In fact, this is how William Shakespeare might present his plays if he were alive today, according to Ralph Alan Cohen, who directed this performance of "Antony and Cleopatra."
"We do what Shakespeare did," he says. "Modern acting techniques are wrong."
Mr. Cohen, a professor of English at James Madison University, founded and runs the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express, a non-profit, traveling theater company that performs Shakespeare using the same principles the bard himself used.
For example, because Shakespeare usually performed in daylight, the group, when not performing outdoors, plays in a fully lighted theater. The company uses an Elizabethan-style "thrust" stage, with the audience on three sides and no one more than 45 feet away.
With the audience up close and everyone able to see one another, the plays become interactive. Characters chase each other through the audience, often hiding in seats or shoving a spectator onto the stage as a decoy. "When you come see us," Mr. Cohen says, "you're not just at a play, you're in a play."
Actors sing Elizabethan songs in the text to the tune of modern songs. "Shakespeare played popular music at his plays," Mr. Cohen says. "So do we."
In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," for example, songs are sung to the tune of "Strangers in the Night" and the theme from the TV show "Gilligan's Island."
The group's mission is to present Shakespeare's works as he originally intended them -- as popular entertainment. "We want the average guy to come see us." Mr. Cohen says. "We think Shakespeare ought to be fun and exciting and move fast."
"We Just Keep Talking"
Fast, indeed. While traditional performances of Shakespeare run three or four hours, the Shakespeare Express performs its plays in two hours. How do they do it? "We just keep talking," he says. But why do they do it? Because that's what Shakespeare did.
The Shenandoah Shakespeare Express was born out of a class Mr. Cohen taught in 1987, his 14th year at James Madison. This seminar on Henry V was different from others he had taught in that it focused not just on the play, but also on Shakespeare's production of it. At the end of the term, the class performed Henry V using those principles, and, just like that, Mr. Cohen had rediscovered Shakespeare.
When Mr. Cohen started the company in 1988, all 12 actors in the group were students at James Madison. Today, all of the company's actors are professionals, and more than 500 people tried out for the troupe this year.
Part of what makes the Shakespeare Express so attractive to actors is the unique training it provides. The speed of the plays creates pressure, and the lighting lets the actors see the audience react. "You have to be on your toes constantly," says Darren Setlow, who was with the company from 1988 to 1992. "It's very enriching from an acting standpoint."
The company performs about 300 shows a year, primarily at colleges and universities. It also plays each summer at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.
"They are better than most groups at capturing the uninitiated Shakespeare audience," says Janet Griffin, director of public programs at the Folger. "They put people at ease with Shakespeare."
But the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express is not just about entertaining. The group also teaches Shakespeare workshops, in which students use the actors to explore the plays, experimenting with different ways of saying and acting lines, or with how plot develops.
Research in Action
Mr. Cohen calls his theater group "research in action" and says his work with the actors continually shows him new ways to approach Shakespeare.
One of Mr. Cohen's discoveries is that Shakespeare scholars have long misinterpreted or missed nuances in the master's plays that only become clear if you are aware of the original theater conditions.
For example, why does the Fool in "King Lear" always leave the stage just before Cordelia appears? And why does the King refer to Cordelia as his "fool"? Because the same actor played Cordelia and the Fool. Shakespeare's troupe was small. and actors were forced to fill several roles in a play, just as they do in Mr. Cohen's group.
Even the balcony scene in "Romeo and Juliet" takes on new meaning, he says, when one realizes that Shakespeare could not dim the lights, and therefore the two actors would have been facing each other in daylight when Juliet asks, "Wherefore art thou Romeo?"
"Right now, everything I know about Shakespeare is from my work with SSE," he says. "This is what Shakespeare is all about."
