Upcoming Event: The Director's Cut

Upcoming Event at Perrot:

Shakespeare on the Sound’s Artistic Director, Ezra Barnes (and his players) present "The Director’s Cut," a talk about this summer’s production of The Comedy of Errors Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 7:30 P.M. in the Library.

This year, for the first time, Shakespeare on the Sound will be performing this year's play, The Comedy of Errors, in Greenwich, in addition to their usual performances in Rowayton's Pinkney Park. The performances will take place in Roger Sherman Baldwin Park at 7:30 P.M., Thursday, July 5th, 2007, through Sunday, July 8th, 2007. The production is free and no tickets are necessary. We at Perrot want to welcome Shakespeare on the Sound to Greenwich and offer this evening as inducement to attend their performances.

Like all of Shakespeare’s plays, The Comedy of Errors has no received version, no absolute way of presenting the play. Because each production is new, the plays have been given new life with each generation. A 1907 production was quite different from a 2007 production. Shakespeare’s glorious text offers opportunities for many different interpretations. When you go to a performance for the second time of, say, Swan Lake or The Lion King, you know pretty much what to expect-- the costumes, setting, music remain the same. But with Shakespeare’s plays there are no prescribed limitations. Not even the text is sacred: nearly always the text is cut, and sometimes lines are added. For example, A Midsummer Night’s Dream has been set in a Brazilian rain forest and in Civil War dress, while Macbeth has been played in severe clerical costumes within a circle of chairs, or in Edwardian dress with many lavish settings.

So when Ezra Barnes, Artistic Director of Shakespeare on the Sound, decided to do The Comedy of Errors, there were all kinds of questions he had to answer. He had to make the play intelligible to his audience-- and fun besides. What are the problems and what are the joys in presenting this play to an audience? In The Comedy of Errors, the audience is in on the secret from the beginning. They know, as the characters do not, that there are two separated sets of identical twins who, of course, get into trouble-- the resulting confusion is resolved at the end of the play. Ezra Barnes will speak about how he brought the play from words on a page to live action on stage, with scenes acted by his players.