Ten Years!

Ten years! Nine shows down, a great one ahead to celebrate our tenth anniversary. Hamlet will finish the decade that Romeo and Juliet began. In that decade, while St. Louis has seen boom and bust and the rebuilding of I-64 (Hwy. 40), a steady presence in Forest Park has made itself felt. Thousands of people make their way each May and June to Shakespeare Glen for an evening of the work of the finest playwright in the world. 2001 was the beginning of a new millennium, and a fitting time to bring ageless works of art to a place where many, many people could enjoy them- for free.

For those who got involved when the Festival was just an idea, the growth and substance of the Festival is a source of great satisfaction. Lana Pepper, who organized the Festival and was its first Managing Director, is awed and bemused. “So many of what seemed like grandiose ideas we bantered around the table in 1998 and 1999 are now a reality and it makes everyone’s hard work so worthwhile,” she said. Through the years we have endured torrents, fog, hail, heat, and cold, and been rewarded with soft breezes, sunlight, warmth, camaraderie, entertainment, and magical evenings. From china place settings and candelabra to paper plates and hamburgers, we have made a picnic of Shakespeare.

The Shakespeare Festival finishes the first decade of this millennium with the Bard’s greatest play, Hamlet, directed by area director Bruce Longworth and featuring well-known local actor Jim Butz in the title role (Jim won a Kevin Kline Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor as Marc Antony in 2006’s Julius Caesar). Both Longworth and Butz bring great experience, talent and dedication to the job. “We’ll figure out how to do this together,” Longworth said. “We’re all the sum total of our experiences; in this case we will have no preconceptions based on prior experiences either directing or acting.” 

Hamlet is “the story of a man who must come to terms with the loss of innocence,” Longworth said. “We don’t realize what we have until it’s all taken away.” In short order Hamlet has lost his father, his kingdom, his mother (to his uncle), and will have lost two childhood friends and his girlfriend before he himself dies. Did he lose his sanity? Is he indecisive? Longworth suggests that he begins by feigning madness, but at some point, once he is deeply into the character he is creating, the line begins to blur. However, this is something each actor, director, and member of the audience must decide for himself. As for indecisiveness, “Hamlet is a melancholy young man who is profoundly aware of the stakes of his situation,” he said.  The stakes are high.  “A wrong decision could cost him his soul, so he has to make sure his actions are the right ones.”

Longworth notes that our outdoor setting in Shakespeare Glen brings our audience close to Shakespeare’s own audience. “Ours is a free-flow audience and that’s very exciting.” Like the Globe’s audience, we’re subject to the vagaries of the weather, and people are not merely sitting quietly and respectfully in their seats as in a theatre. They’re engaged, interacting. While we don’t have groundlings shouting at the actors, the actors must work to keep the attention of the audience. This makes for active theatre.

Mark your calendars now and keep your evenings open. The Festival will produce Hamlet from May 26 through June 20, 8:00 nightly except Tuesdays and, this year only, Saturday, June 5. The Green Show will begin at 6:30.

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Photos this page © J. David Levy.  Top: 2004's As You Like It  (Clinton Zugel and Robert A. Mitchell).  Center left: 2007's Much Ado About Nothing (foreground: Magan Wiles* and Paul Kiernan*; background: Jennifer M. Theby and Roger Erb.  Bottom right: 2006's Julius Caesar (Raphael Nash Thompson*)

* Denotes members of Actors’ Equity Association.