Looking Back and Forward: The Play's the Thing


By: Iris Raine Paul

In May we performed under our new name for the first time! Bringing The Curtainless Theatre to the East Lansing Art Festival was a blast: we met a lot of kind, interesting people, and working with the folks organizing the festival was a pleasure. We were honored to be a part of a weekend that highlighted so many talented people involved in the arts community!

Designing the show, I considered how performing in a densely populated, public space gave us a great chance to reach a large audience who may not necessarily have much experience with Shakespeare or classical theatre. It was the perfect opportunity to tackle the question I hear so often: why Shakespeare? The concept for our performance focused around diversity in Shakespeare’s plays and why his texts are still relevant today. I wanted to ensure, given the many attention-grabbing attractions at the festival, that the show would be able to catch people’s eye, so I set the play at the imagined wedding of Othello and Desdemona (a framing device that proved efficient; our actors received several congratulations on their ‘marriage’ as we set up). 

Thus, The Play’s the Thing was born— the name borrowed from a line in Hamlet, meant to parallel our and Hamlet’s use of theater to inspire self-reflection. Beyond the conflict around Othello and Desdemona’s interracial marriage, the ‘wedding guests’ were characters from several other Shakespeare shows, embodying other themes that related to diversity and modern relevance, including unhealthy relationships, mental health, and feminism.

It was a new experience for many, if not all of us, to perform pop-up theatre, and it was a bit of an experiment for the festival as well–a new ‘stage’ they’d never tried utilizing. We were positioned in a busy walkway in the middle of the festival, with only a couple of set pieces distinguishing our playing area from the crowd. The actors were appropriately warned about the inevitability of pedestrian traffic through the set, and did a fantastic job staying in character despite this. In fact, it may have even added an element of immersive-ness to the wedding setting! 

I was tremendously grateful to the East Lansing Art Festival for allowing us to perform with them, as well as having an opportunity to present this particular script to many new faces (and a lot of familiar ones, too!). I also really appreciated the cast, who were good sports about taking direction in what I’m sure felt at times like an abstract script, and who worked hard to bring the show beautifully to life. It allowed me to see what I liked about the script, and what I might want to alter to reach my true vision for the project. So, when Riverwalk Theatre accepted our proposal to perform the show in their black box, I was thrilled. The black box set will allow us to tap into some of the darker themes of the script that wouldn’t have suited a festival setting, and the project is taking on a new dimension, being paired with local organizations that do work dealing with many of the themes the show talks about via a post-show panel discussion. 

I’m very pleased to have this be the first show of our first official season, as I feel it meets many of the marks of our mission: through partnership with both Riverwalk Theatre and the wonderful organizations participating on our panel discussion, community is at the heart of this project; as well, utilizing Shakespeare’s dated language illustrates how long standing the show’s themes and conflicts are, using classical theatre to educate and inspire community dialogue. If you saw us at the art festival, I hope you’ll come experience how the show has developed. If you missed us at the art festival, I hope you’re able to join us this time! The Play’s the Thing will be free and open to the public on August 17th at 7pm, in the Dart Black Box at Riverwalk Theatre.

-Iris Raine Paul

P.S. If you’d like to be involved, auditions are Monday and Tuesday (July 8th and 9th)! Find more info here.


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