The Wit’s Shakesbeer Newsletter #3

Season X

We want our 10th season to be our largest we’ve ever produced, so we’re doing exactly that. Our flagship project, The Wit’s Shakesbeer, is headed to breweries all across the Denver metro area. We’ll be slurring verse and chipping cups with audiences 15 times this summer.  3 shows, a season's worth of performances for each:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Directed by Adeline Mann 

Ran Sundays June 1st - June 29th

The Taming of the Shrew - on NOW!

Directed by Elizabel Riggs

Runs Sundays July 20th - August 17th

July 20th - 4pm @ Ratio Beerworks - Overland (2030 S Cherokee St, Denver, CO 80223)

July 27th - 4pm @ Ratio Beerworks - RiNo (2920 Larimer St, Denver, CO 80205)

August 3rd - 4pm @ Odell Brewing - Sloan's Lake (1625 Perry St, Denver, CO 80204)

August 10th - 4pm @ Goldspot Brewing (4970 Lowell Blvd, Denver, CO 80221)

August 17th - 4pm @ Prost Brewing (2540 19th St, Denver, CO 80211)

Romeo & Juliet - coming soon!

Directed by Kristin Honiotes 

Runs Sundays September 9th - October 5th

Details coming soon!

That’s 3+ months of Sundays, 15 performances! It’s an ambitious season, but our membership wants to deliver something spectacular to celebrate 10 years of our continued project and give everyone who makes up our audiences all over Colorado a chance to see it for themselves. We hope to see you there!

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Meet the Season 10 Directors

It's a femme-forward summer! Meet Addie, Elizabel, and Kristin, our directors for Season 10:

Adeline (Addie) Mann

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Addie has been playing with Shakesbeer since 2015 and currently serves as an Executive Board Member and Artistic Director for The Wit. Over the last decade, she’s done a little bit of everything—acting (10 shows), directing (3 shows), and producing (2 shows)—and has adapted 8 of our Shakesbeer scripts. Last year, with support from a committee of Company Members, Addie also drafted our first-ever set of company Bylaws, codifying our community-driven, collectively-owned approach to collaborative creation. Outside of The Wit, Addie has performed on regional theatre stages across Colorado, including at Curious Theatre, Miner’s Alley Playhouse, The Arvada Center, BETC, Local Theatre Company, The Aurora Fox Arts Center, and The Catamounts, and will make her Denver-area professional directing debut this Fall with A Town Called Harris, an original immersive piece she co-created with playwright Jessica Austgen and Catamounts Artistic Director Amanda Berg Wilson. Addie loved directing Midsummer to kick off Shakesbeer Season 10 in June, and can’t wait for the next 10 seasons!

Elizabel Riggs

The Taming of the Shrew

You may remember Elizabel from her break-out role as Baby John, cousin of Jesus, in the 1994 Christmas pageant at Community Bible Church in High Point, NC. Yes, she was hairless and too large to play newborn Jesus, but she received such praise as “she slept the whole time” and “so glad she didn’t cry!” Now with a full head of hair, Elizabel is excited to make her Shakesbeer directorial debut after a string of onstage ingénue parts and/or mustachioed characters in Cymbeline, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Julius Caesar, and Twelfth Night. A graduate of The Second City - Chicago’s improvisation and acting conservatories, Elizabel is stoked to bring a sense of play to a rather problematic story. Elizabel would like to thank audiences for laughing WITH us. She sends a huge congrats to the hilarious cast and crew on the swashbuckling summertime adventure we created together. And she gives all her love to her husband, Peter - the funniest boy in the land. 

Kristin Honiotes

Romeo and Juliet

Kristin is a founding member of The Wit and serves as our Executive Director. She has directed and produced countless Shakesbeer shows over the last decade. And that’s not all: she’s an actor too! With roles like Viola, Hero, Lysander, Ariel, and King Henry IV under her belt, Kristin has performed in nearly every Shakesbeer show we’ve ever done. In her own words, “When we started this project 10 years ago, I don't think any of us really knew what it was going to be. We knew we liked Shakespeare, beer, and performing but outside of that, we just thought it would be a fun project to keep us going. Little did we know it would grow to be what it is today, a project that brings theater to the people instead of bringing people to the theater. I think the most amazing thing that has come out of that idea is the community we've been able to create and cultivate, one that I am excited to continue sharing for the next 10 years!”

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Faire Play: Shakesbeer's Summer Field Trip

What better way to celebrate our upcoming pirate-themed "Taming" than with a jaunt to the Colorado Renaissance Festival for Pirate Invasion weekend? 

Last Sunday, a crew of Shakesbeerians were among the record-breaking crowds in attendance at Ren Fest, swigging beers and sampling turkey legs in Ye Olde Larkspur-shire. We even took a few shots with a crossbow and caught some good clean fun at the Pirate Ship Stage with the faire-famous Washing Well Wenches. The only disappointment of the day was that the Fest’s Globe Stage didn’t have any Shakespeare on it—an oversight we’d love to correct in future summers…

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Taming of the Brew: Odell beer collab

On Tuesday, July 8, the Shakesbeer crew joined Odell Brewing at their Sloan’s Lake location to craft a very special beer celebrating the company’s 10th anniversary.

This is our 2nd collab with Odell—last summer’s custom beer was a strawberry hibiscus sour, “Fruits of our Labours”—company members pitched in at every stage of the brew process, with Head Brewer Marni helping us bring to life our original spin on an English Pale Ale. The beer will be a limited run, so be sure to come taste our custom brew at our "Taming" show on August 3rd at Odell Sloan’s Lake!

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"There's small choice in rotten apples."

An interview with "Taming" director Elizabel Riggs

Dylan Nevergall (Wit Company Member): For people who are familiar with Taming, it kind of lives in the Shakespeare canon as a show with a difficult legacy (along with Merchant of Venice and Titus Andronicus) I think every time I’ve seen it, it’s clear the cast and crew are grappling with its content. Can you speak to the difficult aspects of it, and tell me what is fun for you about doing a show like this?

Elizabel Riggs (Company Member, “Taming” Director): The Taming of the Shrew is chock full of misogyny, domestic violence, abuse and manipulation, reinforcement of social hierarchy, gender inequality, abusive boss-employee relationships, and more lies than RFK Jr. This is a big challenge to take on as a director, and our cast has been grappling with it, too. We want to show the ugly stuff without condoning it. If anything, we want to show the ugly stuff for what it really is - stupidity and foolishness. When my now assistant director, Amanda, first suggested we tackle this show, I was pretty nervous! In a time where we need to support marginalized groups, why are we putting on a show about emotionally unintelligent men? I spent a lot of time talking with other actors, directors, and artists, and watching every version of the story I could. The fun I found for myself in this show lies in humanizing these characters. Some of them may be bad people, but they're still people. You can't play "misogyny," but you can play an old man, insulated by wealth, who thinks he's the shit. Our cast has had a lot of fun leaning into the flaws in these characters.

What would you hope people who are seeing our version of Taming take away from it?

Elizabel: I hope our audiences walk away from this production feeling like we handled the problematic moments deftly, albeit drunkenly, and that the folly they see onstage makes them laugh. Laughing at society's ills is one way to grapple with them. I really hope they enjoy the mammoth amount of effort put into our costumes and set by Jesse Lee Pacheco. It's a feast for the eyes!

Why pirates?

Elizabel: Since we're dealing with messy characters, I wanted to lean into their outrageous decisions and antics in costuming. I've always admired Jesse's colorful, patchwork art style and knew he could execute and elevate my idea. Pulling from historical pirate queens gave me more direction for Kate and her sense of agency, too. Plus, swashbuckling pirates are just plain old fun. The characters in this play are always moments away from a brawl - might as well give them swords!

This is your first directorial effort for The Wit, what’s important to you as a director? Can you highlight some important experiences you’ve had with other directors in the past?

Elizabel: As a director, I am dead set on creating an environment where folks feel free to take chances, and know that I'm there to support their creativity and their sense of psychological safety. I've had directors who helped me reach deeper places in my craft because they led with care and curiosity. I've also had the opposite experience with directors who rage, disengage, or pit actors against each other. I don't think you can create from a place of fear. My focus for this show was to make this a fun way for my cast to spend their summer, to create something we can be proud of, and to protect our time. I feel really proud of what we made together, and how our cast has supported each other, too.

Obviously a good portion of our audience comes to see our take on the big hits. What would you say to people who have never seen Taming? Or are intimidated by Shakespeare deep cuts?

Elizabel: While Taming isn't likely in the top 3 Shakespeare shows that your average schmuck would know, it's got so many of Shakespeare's tropes that newcomers would recognize from other plays: disguises and mistaken identities, the servants being the smartest people in the room, double entendre, love at first sight, several marriages, pranks and schemes, and leaving society to explore who you really are out in the woods (or in our case, after a little jaunt across the sea). Usually, all I have to say is, "Have you seen 10 Things I Hate About You?," and folks realize they've got some familiarity with the plot already. We did our best to make this show accessible for Shakespeare nerds and newbs alike.

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Petty Grievances

"My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, / Or else my heart, concealing it, will break"  

The Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, Scene 3

Listen, the world is a confusing, overwhelming and often infuriating place. This monthly column will feature a paltry (but legitimate!) complaint from one of our company members to "ease the anguish of a torturing hour" (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 5, Scene 1).

This month's Petty Grievance comes from company member Charles Ewing:

Have you ever considered how much time you save by speeding? Spoilers, speeding isn’t my petty grievance. But have you considered? Colorado’s Department of Transportation estimates that you save less than 30 seconds per day on average by speeding. My guess is that it’s such a small time savings because the traffic light cycles negate any gains made on the highways. If you save a bunch of time going fast and then hit a red at your first or second light, you might as well have not zoomed to the stop. 

So why do we do it? 

Like a History Channel Guest talking about ancient construction with no evidence but full confidence I think we speed because it makes the stressed out, running late, lizard brain feel better. Taking action, even if it is futile, is better than feeling like we have no agency, which is awful. So we find ourselves living by the words of Sonic the Hedgehog: “Gotta go fast.”

WHAT I CANNOT ABIDE is people who pass on the right or in an exit-only lane. 

Let me be clear, I’m not talking about people who use the whole road to get as far forward as they are allowed before merging into the highway. I will always do that with a clean zipper merge at the end and a smug smile, knowing the best research available says that it reduces traffic by using the whole road. I am also not justifying people who sit in the left lane going five miles under the speed limit! 

What I am complaining about is when the left lane is open, I’m cruising at the speed limit in the middle lane, and some jabroni in a Cybertruck pulls into the right lane to pass me. 

THE PASSING LANE IS OPEN! 

Three problems with this. First, it annoys me. That’s the big headline here. I am annoyed when people do this. The license that allows you to clamber in behind the wheel of your Chevy Cruze isn’t made of arbitrary rules; it’s an agreement with everyone else on the road to do what's best for all of us. When you pull out of traffic into an exit-only lane, you are shitting on that agreement like a pigeon on a child's ice cream cone.  Second, it is objectively less safe to go to the right where slower cars are merging into the highway, and third, cars in the middle lane cannot see you as well, increasing the odds of a crash, but mostly I’m mad because it’s selfish and doesn’t actually gain you anything!

I can only believe the slow lane Jeff Gordons have lost the plot that each car on the road has at least one living, breathing human being in them and see the other autos as obstacles to dodge GTA style. Our country has no viable mass transit, and while it sucks, we are largely forced to drive, BUT WE ARE ALL THERE TOGETHER. 

I’ll speak to the driver of the red supercab pickup with licence plate BDR 529 now. You are better than this. Jumping into the exit-only lane of I-25 south at Santa Fe to pass 1 car is a time savings beneath you. You have the power to take care of other people, just as they were taking care of you by leaving the left lane entirely open. Remember you are a steward of the road, and please, just pass on the left.

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That's all, folks!

Check back in with us next month, where we’ll hear from some more of the folks that make up our company, and get more details on Kristin's run of Romeo & Juliet, featuring original live music.