Last night, I saw my very first live performance of a Shakespeare play. I met up with two old friends and fellow Lit nerds and drove an hour down 95 to the fairytale land of the PFI Historic Park in Ellicott City. After hiking up a dark road with a shoulder guarded by a line of cones acting as our pathway, we made it to the park for the show, which was an outdoor performance of The Comedy of Errors by the Chesapeake Shakespeare group and held within the stone ruins of the park.
While it had its fair share of oddities, which included wigs belonging in a Dragon Ball Z episode and two separate musical interludes/dance numbers of Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads, the performance placed a perpetual grin on my face from beginning to end. The actors were brilliant and so completely committed to their characters that my friends and I were questioning the sanity of lustful madman playing Antipholus of Syracuse even after the bows. I left the performance feeling as if I knew the characters like new friends, and feeling as if I understood the brilliance that is Shakespeare in more depth than I ever have.
The fact that people are still performing these plays - still laughing until their sides ache and crying until their cheeks are soaked - amazes me. Shakespeare's characters have the ability to still reach out to people centuries after the man who created them has passed, no matter if these characters are dressed traditionally or farcically and regardless of what time period they are portraying.
Before seeing this show, I had been content to simply read Shakespeare's work or to watch performances online. I did not feel the need to see live performances. While I love theatre, I have always found it easier and cheaper to experience it from my own bedroom rather than paying for a ticket and driving out to a show. However, I don't think I can be satisfied with this stay at home theatre any longer. Last night reminded me how amazing it is to be in an audience, to watch a story unfold literally all around you, with actors running through the audience and swinging around a stage that sits less than ten feet in front of you. It gives even more power to the lines that were already powerful before they were spoken aloud, when they existed only as words written down by the playwright.
I've always believed that literature is what connects us. It allows us to glance inside the mind of famous writers we could only dream of meeting. It has the ability to reach across time and space and affect the minds of millions of people who may never meet, but who are linked by the words they read and the emotions those words set ablaze within them. Now I see that theatre has this same capacity.
Being within the audience last night was like being a part of the lives of the characters, and I imagine how many other audiences, all from different places and times in history, have sat before a stage, hearing these same lines and finding wonder in them. I find myself craving that feeling again, wanting to feel so immersed in the story that I feel like a character in it. This, my first face-to-face meeting with the Bard, has made me fall in love all over again with not only him, but with theatre and literature as well, and I am determined to make it the first of many close encounters with these works. I can only imagine what other insights these performances will grant me in the future and I hope to continue to find myself a part of the many worlds Shakespeare has created for his audience's to revel in.
While it had its fair share of oddities, which included wigs belonging in a Dragon Ball Z episode and two separate musical interludes/dance numbers of Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads, the performance placed a perpetual grin on my face from beginning to end. The actors were brilliant and so completely committed to their characters that my friends and I were questioning the sanity of lustful madman playing Antipholus of Syracuse even after the bows. I left the performance feeling as if I knew the characters like new friends, and feeling as if I understood the brilliance that is Shakespeare in more depth than I ever have.
The fact that people are still performing these plays - still laughing until their sides ache and crying until their cheeks are soaked - amazes me. Shakespeare's characters have the ability to still reach out to people centuries after the man who created them has passed, no matter if these characters are dressed traditionally or farcically and regardless of what time period they are portraying.
Before seeing this show, I had been content to simply read Shakespeare's work or to watch performances online. I did not feel the need to see live performances. While I love theatre, I have always found it easier and cheaper to experience it from my own bedroom rather than paying for a ticket and driving out to a show. However, I don't think I can be satisfied with this stay at home theatre any longer. Last night reminded me how amazing it is to be in an audience, to watch a story unfold literally all around you, with actors running through the audience and swinging around a stage that sits less than ten feet in front of you. It gives even more power to the lines that were already powerful before they were spoken aloud, when they existed only as words written down by the playwright.
I've always believed that literature is what connects us. It allows us to glance inside the mind of famous writers we could only dream of meeting. It has the ability to reach across time and space and affect the minds of millions of people who may never meet, but who are linked by the words they read and the emotions those words set ablaze within them. Now I see that theatre has this same capacity.
Being within the audience last night was like being a part of the lives of the characters, and I imagine how many other audiences, all from different places and times in history, have sat before a stage, hearing these same lines and finding wonder in them. I find myself craving that feeling again, wanting to feel so immersed in the story that I feel like a character in it. This, my first face-to-face meeting with the Bard, has made me fall in love all over again with not only him, but with theatre and literature as well, and I am determined to make it the first of many close encounters with these works. I can only imagine what other insights these performances will grant me in the future and I hope to continue to find myself a part of the many worlds Shakespeare has created for his audience's to revel in.