CTC invites audiences to rediscover 'love' of Shakespeare - The Independent

WAKEFIELD, R.I. — Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning begins Sonnet 43 with, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

Move over, Browning.

On Friday, the Contemporary Theater’s troupe will try to do some counting on the many and varied ways that volatile emotion captures — perhaps even entraps — people, but through the eyes, mind and words of Shakespeare.

If you are bewitched, befuddled or bothered by love’s enduring qualities, then the repartee from lines in Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies will certainly give you more to think about.

The show, “Dearer Than Eyesight: Scenes of Love from Shakespeare” attempts to provoke the audience to break free of expectations and see how love brings good, bad, and indifference into people’s lives.  

“Love brings us all together, but it can be very tragic and very good,” said Tammy Brown, theater artistic director. Life experience defies this simple explanation, as Brown knows, and she engages her troupe to explore the complicated underlying and ever-moving parts — whether in romance, with families or part of friendship.

The many views lie with how the beholder sees this intoxicating force in life. And in the end, by audience direction, how each production settles the matter.

As history shows, intoxication — whether from love or other sources — can lead to grandiose emotional reactions.

They can slide along a scale from wildly exhilarating to purposefully destructive. To provide a bit of uplifting wit accompanied with sad calamity, CTC also invites Shakespeare to the stage to demonstrate some of it.

To be more precise, the 405-year-old bard is invited telepathically to the theater’s outdoor patio, where the five-member cast will channel him with their modern dialogue that provides context to original Shakespearean scenes played out.

The language will also include the original clever word plays, metaphors and insults.

The scripted play has been adapted by CTC’s own Amy Lee Connell and Julian Trilling.

“We want to give it a modern twist,” Brown, the CTC’s artistic director, said. “So the actors will speak in modern-day language, but will quote from various Shakespeare works in a point-counterpoint discussion of love, its tragedy and its many entanglements.”

This show is also depending on the high-energy drama of the actors to make a point-counterpoint, college classroom-like Socratic debate that is engaging, interesting and, most of all, real to the audience.

Drama depends on a suspension of disbelief. We believe and don’t believe that what is happening is real.

We know it’s real and we know it’s not real. We suspend our disbelief, but our disbelief is still there. All dramatic forms depend on this paradox to work, and the paradox becomes especially clear with tragedy because the stakes are so high.

And in a theatre, there’s no screen to distance the audience from the action.

Snippets of lines from “Romeo and Juliet,” “Othello” and even “Measure for Measure” could appear when hammering a point in rising and falling emotion about the toxicity of love.

One example could be love’s loyalty to an alcoholic brother or sister, rather than setting boundaries that separate someone from engaging with them. Life or death can seem to hang in the balance with that choice.

Another, Brown offered, is someone emotionally diving into a romantic relationship, giving up all parts of themself and surrendering their own needs for only the promise of what appears in another.

“Have we ever seen that happen with someone or ourselves?” asked Brown. The simple answer for most is yes, she added.

On the comedy side, “Tempest,” “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Midsummer’s Dream” could provide some uplifting views about the alternating quandary of love many people experience.

The good part, though, is that love — like beauty — is in the eye of the beholder. In this instance, that means the audience.

The audience after each performance will decide whether love is a comedy or tragedy. The performers will then act the final scenes according the to the audience’s choice, said Brown, who played Hamlet in the CTC production under the same name.

She gave a laugh. “Yes, we do have to rehearse two separate endings so that we’re ready for whatever that choice is,” she said.

And there is something for lovers of Shakespeare’s sonnets, too. Various love sonnets will be read by cast members, special invited guests and even willing audience members who volunteer before the show starts.

There’s no word yet on whether Browning will get any equal airtime with Sonnet 43, “How Do I Love Thee?” It is often said there’s no competitor to Shakespeare.

Channeling Shakespeare will be CTC veteran actors Neal Leaheey and Ezra Jordan, along with returning performers Tylar Jahumpa, Magenta Kolakowski and Trilling, who helped to draft the script.

Leaheey said, “The show itself is a fun and innovative way to talk about the different facets of love and uses scenes from Shakespeare to get the characters and audience thinking about it.”

He said he has done one other proper full Shakespeare play as an actor, and during the pandemic often improvised in Shakespearian style, which included online work in a troupe based out of Impro Theatre in Los Angeles that focused for about a year on how to effectively improvise full Shakespeare plays well together.

“It inspired me to try working on a scripted show with Shakespeare in it instead,” said Leaheey, who has been a performer and director for about 20 years.

Brown praised the entire ensemble. “They work hard together, they jibe and they are supportive of each other,” she said. “They also like to have fun and make each other laugh.”

Costume designers are Marissa Dufault and Maddie England. Run time for the show is about 90 minutes and tickets can be obtained at contemporarytheatercompany.com

“We want to have a high-energy show,” Brown said. “We want people to have fun, even though there is talk of tragedy, too.”

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CTC invites audiences to rediscover 'love' of Shakespeare - The Independent
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