Shakespeare on Wheels Renews Midsummer Nights' Themes
By Jennifer Caspar
Special to The Washington Post
It's difficult to picture "Macbeth" - William Shakespeare's gory
and mystical play about a burly, barbaric tribe of Scots-in the Japanese
kabuki motif. No blood, no guts, no
wincing or other facial emotion.
Then again, it's about as likely as
a completely mobile summer theater company trying to pass off
Elizabethan drama as a fun way to
spend a summer evening.
Yet the students and producers involved in Shakespeare on Wheels, a
summer project of the University of
Maryland-Baltimore County, are finding that the bard's magic is still very
potent. If their growing number of
supporters is any indication, they
seem to be reaching many people
with the playwright's classic themes.
Now in its fifth summer touring
Maryland and parts of Virginia and
Pennsylvania, the troupe packs up
the stage - a 30 foot flatbed trailer - and moves its production just
about anywhere to give a free performance to the public.
Perhaps the universal themes of
Shakespeare's work are what make
them appeal to so many, "Greed or
murder in any language is the same,"
said William T. Brown, chairman of
the theater department at University
of Maryland-Baltimore County and
founder of Shakespeare on Wheels,
which will bring its curious, Japanese-
inspired "Macbeth" to Rockville Saturday and to Bowie, Laurel and Fort
Washington next week.
For Brown, who produces the
group's annual tour, the goal is simple: to remove the highbrow image
of Shakespeare and bring his poetry
to the people. Playful inventions
with the physical set and textual
presentation are among the gimmicks troupe members use to coax
people out to see their shows.
The target audience, Brown said,
is particularly people who, number
one, may not like Shakespeare, who
have had maybe a bad experience as
a child not understanding it. We want
to show them that it can be enjoyable. I like to bring it to hospitals, to
people who are unable to get to see
this kind of production and just to
kind of introduce people to the works
of Shakespeare who ordinarily
wouldn't be interested in it. And because we do it in a free production,
they actually have not lost anything."
The theater the group has used for
five years is a re-creation of one
Brown helped to build in 1963 with a
group of students in Ibadan, Nigeria.
At the time, he was on a two year
grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to set up a theater program at
the university there-an extension of
the University of London-to teach
the Western approach to scenic design and scenic construction."
He was helping a group of students who used their Easter
vacation to bring dramatic presentations
to neighboring villages, where large
turnouts often meant people had to
be turned away at the doors.
His solution: build a mobile stage
on a flatbed truck so they could bring
a theater to the people. Because they
were presenting a collection of excerpts from Shakespeare's plays, the
stage was modeled after a medieval
pageant wagon, on which mounted
scenes were carried around.
The Nigerian audiences, who,
according to Brown, spoke different
African tongues but shared English
as a second language, were enthusiastic about the performances. The
crowds were very vocal and boisterous, and sometimes crowded the
stage, he said.
Brown said he frequently recalls
one particularly 'electrifying" occasion. At a performance in the
middle of an athletic field, while one
of the actors was reciting a soliloquy, he began to hear an echo.
I couldn't imagine where in the
world this echo was coming from,
because there was nothing around for
the sound to be bouncing off of," he
said, 'and then as I looked at the audience I could see that their mouths
were moving-they were reciting
the soliloquy with the actors!"
It's difficult to picture "Macbeth" - William Shakespeare's gory
and mystical play about a burly, barbaric tribe of Scots-in the Japanese
kabuki motif. No blood, no guts, no
wincing or other facial emotion.
Then again, it's about as likely as
a completely mobile summer theater company trying to pass off
Elizabethan drama as a fun way to
spend a summer evening.
Yet the students and producers involved in Shakespeare on Wheels, a
summer project of the University of
Maryland-Baltimore County, are finding that the bard's magic is still very
potent. If their growing number of
supporters is any indication, they
seem to be reaching many people
with the playwright's classic themes.
Now in its fifth summer touring
Maryland and parts of Virginia and
Pennsylvania, the troupe packs up
the stage - a 30 foot flatbed trailer - and moves its production just
about anywhere to give a free performance to the public.
Perhaps the universal themes of
Shakespeare's work are what make
them appeal to so many, "Greed or
murder in any language is the same,"
said William T. Brown, chairman of
the theater department at University
of Maryland-Baltimore County and
founder of Shakespeare on Wheels,
which will bring its curious, Japanese-
inspired "Macbeth" to Rockville Saturday and to Bowie, Laurel and Fort
Washington next week.
For Brown, who produces the
group's annual tour, the goal is simple: to remove the highbrow image
of Shakespeare and bring his poetry
to the people. Playful inventions
with the physical set and textual
presentation are among the gimmicks troupe members use to coax
people out to see their shows.
The target audience, Brown said,
is particularly people who, number
one, may not like Shakespeare, who
have had maybe a bad experience as
a child not understanding it. We want
to show them that it can be enjoyable. I like to bring it to hospitals, to
people who are unable to get to see
this kind of production and just to
kind of introduce people to the works
of Shakespeare who ordinarily
wouldn't be interested in it. And because we do it in a free production,
they actually have not lost anything."
The theater the group has used for
five years is a re-creation of one
Brown helped to build in 1963 with a
group of students in Ibadan, Nigeria.
At the time, he was on a two year
grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to set up a theater program at
the university there-an extension of
the University of London-to teach
the Western approach to scenic design and scenic construction."
He was helping a group of students who used their Easter
vacation to bring dramatic presentations
to neighboring villages, where large
turnouts often meant people had to
be turned away at the doors.
His solution: build a mobile stage
on a flatbed truck so they could bring
a theater to the people. Because they
were presenting a collection of excerpts from Shakespeare's plays, the
stage was modeled after a medieval
pageant wagon, on which mounted
scenes were carried around.
The Nigerian audiences, who,
according to Brown, spoke different
African tongues but shared English
as a second language, were enthusiastic about the performances. The
crowds were very vocal and boisterous, and sometimes crowded the
stage, he said.
Brown said he frequently recalls
one particularly 'electrifying" occasion. At a performance in the
middle of an athletic field, while one
of the actors was reciting a soliloquy, he began to hear an echo.
I couldn't imagine where in the
world this echo was coming from,
because there was nothing around for
the sound to be bouncing off of," he
said, 'and then as I looked at the audience I could see that their mouths
were moving-they were reciting
the soliloquy with the actors!"
Recalling that image of people,
who had adopted what they knew of
Western culture from textbooks in
missionary schools, so incited by
the text, Brown said he had long
hoped to find a way to inspire his
students back home to appreciate
the bard. Although it took about 22
years, he and Sam McCready, a colleague at the university, attempted
the mobile performances locally and
have found a good response.
McCready is the director for the
productions and has come up with
the innovative interpretations.
None of the participants are paid;
all of the actors and crew are students at the university.
The current Shakespeare on
Wheels productions are so mobile,
they can go anywhere. 'We've taken
it inside prison walls at Jessup Correctional Institution. Two years ago
we played on F Street, in front of
National Place. It's so adaptable that
it can go any place that people will
have us," Brown said.
Brown points to the' informal setting
of the performances as an invitation to more skeptical viewers.
Sitting out on a blanket, for example,
it is easier for a parent to explain
the story to a child having difficulty with the language.
This year's innovative "Macbeth"
is hardly shocking to followers of
the five-year old troupe who have
seen it put on "The Comedy of Errors" as an early 1920s vaudevillian'
routine, and "Twelfth Night" as one
of the Arabian Nights" tales. Although director McCready never
touches the language of the plays,
his twists give everyone a new way
to look at the plays.
While the kabuki style takes from
the cultural implications of "Macbeth's" original text, the dramatic
innovation helps to draw out the
work's underlying themes. The macabre text is largely sterilized by
the Japanese motif.
At times, the weird sisters seem
less like mysterious foreboders of a
divine will and more like cheerleaders at a high school pep rally. When
slain characters are pulled off stage
dragging a scarlet ribbon to signify
their blood, the effect is dramatic,
though the gruesome horror typically
associated with the play is lost.
Even the fights are stiff and ceremonial. And the masks, obscuring
most of the actors' faces, require
that most emotion be displayed
through bodily movements.
The group's free performances
begin at 7:30 p.m. It will be in
Rockville Saturday at the Courthouse Square Park in Town Center,
in Bowie Wednesday at Allen Pond,
in Laurel Aug. 4 at the Montpelier
Mansion grounds and at the Fort
Washington National Park Aug. 6.
Call the UMBC Theatre Box Office
at (301) 455-2476.
Carl Freundel as Macbeth and Edie Catto as Lady Macbeth put a new face on the play. Shakespeare on Wheels is presenting "Macbeth" as kabuki theater.