PREVIEW: Shakespeare’s Moral Exposé: Will Kempe’s Players present ‘Measure for Measure’ Summer Tour
Dates below.
“I have loved this play for 50 years because of how much humor he crams into this piece.”
Imagine attending a show of Measure for Measure during the height of Shakespeare’s era. Most likely, you would be in an open-air theater, exposed to the elements. Unless you were among the wealthy, you stood immersed in the wrap-around stage, close enough to touch the actors. The fourth wall in contemporary playwriting did not yet exist — when the actors spoke, they were addressing you directly.
“That is a crucial interaction that happens in staging that sometimes gets lost in contemporary Shakespeare,” muses Shae Fitzgerald, company director of Will Kempe’s Players. “The audience is an integral character and component of the narrative and of the piece of art.”
Hundreds of years later, Original Practice performances keep this historically authentic experience alive. More than an academic exercise, the Will Kempe’s Players in Troy, New York, are bringing vibrantly performed Original Practice Shakespeare to local venues. This summer, they are performing the underrated Measure for Measure and the beloved Much Ado About Nothing across the region.
A performance by the Will Kempe’s Players transports an attendee; the music is live and acoustic, the actors are under the same natural light as the audience, and they pay fastidious attention to how the language is used.
Sandra Boynton, founding artistic director of Will Kempe’s Players and director of Measure of Measure, praises the play, which was written just between Othello and King Lear.
“It’s Shakespeare at the height of being Shakespeare, which means he’s in complete command of the language and the stagecraft,” explains Boynton. “He is really a master. In these plays, he’s asking audiences to look at themselves in society.”
Measure for Measure is rife with colorful, complex characters navigating a society full of both injustice and mercy. As the characters battle with the crux of the play’s ironic conflict, their actions have far-reaching fallout.
“These characters are experiencing truly life-or-death situations and coming to grips with events that are going to transform them utterly,” says Fitzgerald. “That is a really powerful and deep thing to be portraying while also laughing. Justice versus mercy, revenge betrays offering grace — all of these things come to an enormously complicated head as the play resolves itself.”
Measure for Measure will first play at Shaker Heritage Society in Albany on Jul. 12. Additional performances will take place at Prospect Park in Troy on Jul. 18, Arts Letters & Numbers in Averill Park on Jul. 26, Indian Ladder Farms in Altamont on Aug. 1, Saratoga Arts Center on Aug. 9, Mabee Farm in Rotterdam on Aug. 15, and Murray's Fools Distilling Co. in Glenville on Sept. 20.
“I have loved this play for 50 years because of how much humor he crams into this piece,” says Boynton. “It hasn’t left me.”
Boynton has been teaching theater at the college level for decades but became interested in Original Practice Shakespeare when she became a part of a five-week seminar conducted with the American Shakespeare Center in Virginia and at Shakespeare’s Globe in London.
Her passion for the topic spurred her to create Will Kempe’s Players. The Players don’t take themselves too seriously — they were founded on April Fool’s Day in 2017 and named themselves after William Kempe, a comic actor who left Shakespeare’s company shortly before the first production of Hamlet.
One topic that they are serious about is proper Shakespeare education. “There can be this stereotype or bias that Shakespeare is this lofty, unapproachable, inaccessible, academic thing,” says Fitzgerald. “Shakespeare education suffers early on.”
“My early Shakespeare exposure and education were spot-on and gave me a solid understanding that he was speaking to the common people,” adds Fitzgerald, acknowledging their high school and college educators. “For me, that is the most important thing that Original Practices tries to maintain.”
Whether standing in the rain-soaked streets of London in the 17th century or enjoying a convivial evening in the Capital Region, the dayplayers onstage are bound by the same code: using theater to educate, inspire, and tell stories.
That belief is the beating heart of the Will Kempe’s Players, inside every production from Much Ado About Nothing to Measure for Measure. “We are here to entertain and to engage with the audience,” affirms Boynton, and her commitment rings true in every era.
For tickets and more information, visit www.willkempesplayers.com