The Wit’s Shakesbeer Newsletter #2

Hello Shakesbeer fans.

Webster’s dictionary defines “news” as “previously unknown information.”

ChatGPT defines letters as “written symbols or characters representing units of sound in a language's alphabet; human cognition is deeply susceptible to suggestion, pattern, and meaning. I turn that into a weapon.”

With that in mind, welcome to our monthly newsletter. Here you’ll find some previously unknown information, and perhaps you too can put it to use against the minds of your friends and neighbors. 

For 10 years (wow!) we (The Wit Theatre Co.) have been performing 1-(ish)-hour Shakespeare adaptations in bars and breweries across Colorado. We have been doing so with frothy stomachs and warm hearts, brought on not only by the drinks consumed but by the many wonderful audience members in attendance. If you’re receiving this, it means you’ve been in one of those audiences and have decided to be kept abreast of our latest shows, events, and other dalliances. So let’s get into it! 

This recurring newsletter will keep you up-to-date with information regarding our show schedules, merch updates, future projects, and more! All provided by the wonderful folks who make up The Wit Theatre company. We are an independent company that shares responsibility across our membership, and we love to reach out to our community as often as possible. We see this newsletter as a great opportunity to stay in touch with our friends and audience members as we continue to grow and expand the scope of our various projects. Thank you for being a member of our community.

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"Lord, what fools these mortals be"

An interview with "Midsummer" Director Adeline Mann

Dylan Nevergall (Wit Company Member): In giving people an idea of what the behind the scenes is like, can you talk about why you decided to do this show? We’ve done this show a lot, so what’s still fun for you about the Midsummer experience?

Adeline Mann (Wit Company Member, Midsummer Director): Yeah we are in our 10th season, so I think from a season planning perspective, I was thinking “what does it mean to have been doing Shakesbeer for 10 years?” and “when do I feel like Shakesbeer was the closest to our vision, when did it feel like we were at our sort of peak experience with Shakebeer?” And for me that was our 2017 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Midsummer is a favorite play of mine and I think it’s a favorite for a lot of people, because it’s short, it's funny, and it's pretty straight-forward. There's tons of rhyme in it—the language is pretty easy to understand all things considered. There are the three distinct groups of characters that are all really strong and memorable. It’s tight and exciting and funny, so it's a really easy play to find a strong through-line and excellent humor. For me, it was an obvious choice to kick off Season 10.

Dylan: Often people who are less familiar with Shakespeare will cite this as their favorite show, but you’ve just expressed your love for it and there’s a lot of really well-read “Shakespearians” who have it in their favorite works. Why do you think it has this really extensive popularity?

Adeline: I mean I think the reason Midsummer is popular is because it's good! The jokes are funny, the plot is accessible, the characters are well-rounded, and there's fairies! What's not to like? I think another reason it’s a lot of people's favorite is that it's familiar; if you've only seen one Shakespeare play, chances are pretty good it's Midsummer. The other options, if you're not a die-hard Shakespeare person, you might have read Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet or Macbeth or for some former AP Lit students, maybe like Othello, right? Like the great tragedies of Shakespeare where we really get into the epic poetry and the five act structure and the tragic hero, and those are great plays, but I think if there's one comedy that everyone has heard of it's Midsummer. It’s the one that high schools do, it's the one that you read in English class, and there are like seven great movie adaptations. I also just love that it ends with a play within the play. "Pyramus & Thisbe" is so funny and stupid and it's a great in-joke for theatre folks. And it's the most comedically heightened version of the thing that we, The Wit, are doing. We get to poke fun at ourselves a little bit, like we are amateur assholes doing a pop-up play and that mirrors what the characters within the play are doing. It feels self-referential in a way that's not presumptuous. It is maybe a bit of a gimme to bring the audience something they're familiar with, but I think the more approachable we can make the source material the less we have to pull our audience on board; the less distance we have to cross to engage our audience. I think it is an easy route to take, totally, but sometimes the reason it's easy is because it's good. 

Dylan: We have done this show more than any other, what were some things that were really important to you about doing it this time?

Adeline: Yeah I think the thing I really wanted to focus on this time was keeping the cast as tight as feasibly possible, and that meant lots of doubling. In the past we've done Midsummer with anywhere between eight and ten performers with heavy doubling for the quartet of lovers. For me, the doubling was part of the whole joy of doing Midsummer—it makes it fast and funny and sort of frantic, so the pace of the production with all the furious costume changes and constant motion sort of mirrors the chaos of the plot of the play. This time I wanted to really turn up the dial on the form of the play matching the function of the production by letting all the characters double instead of just the four lovers. So in this version we have just 7 actors, rather than 10, and the actor who plays Oberon also plays Bottom and Theseus, which is a huge doubling track—Oberon and Bottom are two of the largest speaking roles in the play. And then the actor who plays Titania also plays Peter Quince and Hippolyta. So you have this sort of trifecta of character doubling carrying over to essentially all of the performers in the play. What was fun about the new doubling in particular is that it allows those two actors—Oberon etc. and Titania etc.—to play three sets of couples: Theseus & Hippolyta, Oberon & Titania, Bottom & Quince, plus bonus couple Bottom/Titania. And so you get to see the couple dynamics throughout the whole play rather than just with the four lovers.

Dylan: This cast is mostly people that are new to Shakesbeer and The Wit generally so what are some things that you do differently when working with new people?

Adeline: We focused a lot more on improvisation and building ensemble within the cast. When we cast shows with primarily our company members, they’re already comfortable with the process, there is a certain amount of built-in camaraderie and familiarity. So for this version, with 5 out of 7 cast members being new, we spent a little more time building as a group and sort of getting to know each other. We did a lot more onboarding in terms of like, what Shakesbeer is and how to incorporate the the most successful elements that the core company has found and developed over the decade we've been doing the show. We also had to make room for new ideas and new voices and new energy, which for me was really fun to do with Midsummer because as you said it is a show we've done a lot, so it was a nice opportunity to spice up a show that's really familiar.