John W. Miller of The Daily Yonder writes about a phenomenal troupe of actors who are devoted to bringing Shakespeare to rural America, not as “cultural saviors,” but as people who love the works of the Bard. Remember that Shakespeare’s plays were meant to be performed. In 19th century America, actors brought Shakespeare plays and scenes to small towns, and sometimes performed in local taverns to enthusiastic audiences who knew the plays well enough to throw tomatoes when the actors messed up their lines. In his important study of Shakespeare and American popular culture, historian Lawrence W. Levine reminds us of the two rogues in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn who “pass themselves off as a duke and a king,” and plan to raise money by performing scenes from Romeo and Juliet and Richard III. The troupe described here are not rogues and they do know their lines.
Miller writes:
Jason Young, co-founder of West Virginia’s only touring Shakespeare troupe, rejects the notion that his group, the Rustic Mechanicals, might be playing the role of savior bringing culture to small-town rubes.
In his view, the Bard already belongs to rural America, because he, as a small-town West Virginian, belongs to rural America.
“We do this because we are the hicks who happen to know Shakespeare, and we’re making an investment in our home,” he said.
Reports of Rust Belt decline often focus on the shrinking paycheck, but the dispossession is also cultural. When a factory closes, a town loses a thousand people who could pay ten bucks to see a concert or show. Art follows the money. It’s a kind of poverty that most journalism about economic and economic geography struggles to capture.
That’s why Young’s work is so important. The Bridgeport, West Virginia-based director and actor is busy rehearsing and in 2022 will lead his troupe of 10 or so actors on a 60-date tour of West Virginia and surrounding states. Starting in April, they’ll perform — incredibly — five different plays: Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Love Labor’s Lost. The venture is funded by fees from schools and theaters, and grant money.
The troupe is still organizing bookings and ironing out their schedule, and all details will be available on their Facebook page.
Each play will be cut down to 90 minutes and performed with simple costumes and modern music.
Young founded the troupe, named after rambling actors in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with West Virginia actor Celi Oliveto in 2014. Young, who was born in West Virginia’s southern coalfields, where his dad worked as a mine health and safety inspector, had been teaching high school drama for six years and was tired, he told me, of “churning out musicals so parents could clap for their kid while he’s dressed as a Dalmatian.”
The new gang started in 2014 with a seven-person production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that toured four venues, including an amphitheater attached to a Baptist church.
There is another touring group based out of Virginia–Shenandoah Shakespeare Express that has a similar mission. I had the opportunity to see them perform seven
Times when I lived in the South.
The Bard lives!
This is so awesome.
Young really groks Shakespeare. His comments are a delightful read. And, West Viriginia, see that these players are well used!
Here’s something all the great K-12 teachers of Shakespeare out there know, and there are many such: Kids should NEVER simply read Shakespeare until they have seen him live lots of times and gotten the heck out of their seats and performed him lots of times. This stuff is a freaking blast.
Break a leg, Mr. Young!!!
This has nothing to do with anything, but, Bob, every time you use the word “grok,” I think of a frog croaking. I can feel the word erupting from the same region inhabited by the king of belches. The sound of the word just doesn’t say intuitive, and/or empathetic understanding to me.
Sorry, just had to get that out. 🙂
Haaa!
The word intuitive suggests having a sense of something without really knowing it intimately, so that’s not a very good definition of “to grok,” though the definition sometimes appears in dictionaries. It’s good to remember that dictionaries are written by people, and they aren’t perfect because sometimes the writer doesn’t really grok the word. To grok something is to understand it profoundly–really to know it, so much so that the subject-object distinction between you and it breaks down and you are no longer separate from it, as in when Sonny Rollins or Charlie Parker or John Coltrane was really on a roll and became his instrument. Here’s a suggestion for dealing with that cognitive dissonance due to the croaking association–think of grog, the drink, of being drunk with passion for, identification with, something. That, I think, was the source of the term for Heinlein.
That’s what intuitive means to me. It is part of my being deep down. It “feels” right.
ah
Grog and “drunk with passion” doesn’t do it for me. My only experiences with alcohol ended in throwing up or wishing I could. Never did master nor want to the euphoria some people seem to associate with indulgence. My system always objected.
I, too, am not a drinker, speduktr, except in moderation and on rare occasion. I used to tell my students to try pouring some vodka around the base of a plant and coming back to check on it in a couple hours. The stuff is poison. Literally.
While we are on Shakespeare, allow a plug for Lucy Negro Redux, a ballet inspired by a book about the “dark lady” of the sonnets and set to the music of Rhiannon Giddens. The Nashville Ballet will tour with this wonderfully creative show after tonight’s performance in Nashville. The show is set to be seen in Kansas City, Denver, Santa Fe, and Norfolk, Va.
!!!!!!!!
People like this tend to at least somewhat restore my gaind in human beings. .
YES!!!
Here are our Montana thespians who bring Shakespeare into schools and parks across the state (many rural areas).
https://www.shakespeareintheparks.org/education/shakespeare-in-the-schools
A worthy mission. Best wishes to everyone involved.