Albert Einstein, Hand Sanitizer, and the Great Cookie Tragedy of Aught-Seven

Or, “All the Things You Never Knew Were Part of a Shakespeare Festival” 

Orrville, Ohio, September 21-22:

Our stay in Orrville was sandwiched between a mammoth drive on either end; fortunately, my talent for sleeping in cars is unrivalled by any man, woman or child I have yet encountered. If only there were an Olympic Sleeping Team, I’d be on my way to Beijing next year. I think I may actually be better at sleeping than anything else, so it is unfortunate for myself and the teenage boys of the world that is not generally esteemed a useful skill.

The people at this venue were perhaps the most generous and hospitable of the many kind and courteous hosts we’ve encountered so far. As I understand it, the American Shakespeare Center has been coming here for quite some time, and so the ‘Shakespeare Festival’ (as the sign proclaimed us) is a highly-anticipated event.

For example, a man who owns a local pizza parlour called “The Batcave” apparently makes the troupe pizza every year, and we were no exception. It looked so delicious, I actually had some, which is against my general policy—aptly named the No Pizza Policy. Said pizza-bearing gentleman was described by Chris Johnston as looking like Albert Einstein, a comparison apparently claimed by the man himself, as he signed his letter announcing the subsequent arrival of the pizzas “aka Albert Einstein.” I found him to actually resemble Mark Twain far more than Albert Einstein, though I grant that those two historical personages are not entirely dissimilar in appearance.

We were also given a welcome gift basket with t-shirts, pens, chapstick, chip clips and hand sanitizer—in short, everything an actor on the road needs. The hand sanitizer is also dressed in a little protective vest, apparently a kind of battle armour in the ongoing warfare against 99.9% of the world’s germs. The protective vest also featured a clip at the bottom, and the image of the illustrious Mr. Aaron Hochhalter demonstrating the supreme usefulness of having hand sanitizer clipped to one’s belt loop (“You see that the sanitizer, pointing downwards, is even in the most convenient orientation”) is one that I hope will remain with me for the rest of my life.

On the first day of the ‘Shakespeare Festival,’ we performed a 90-minute Shrew for area high schoolers (see my post On Tour(ing) for more perspective on the 90-minute Shrew), which was followed by three concurrent ‘Shakespeare on Your Feet’ workshops. We had about 40 high school kids in ours, which I think has set the bar for insanity in workshops. They were bright kids, though, and it was a lot of fun. That evening, we had a full production of Taming of the Shrew, and the following evening we performed Merchant of Venice.

The generosity of the audiences did much to make this one of my favourite venues so far, because we were actually performing in a gymnasium. I chiefly dislike performing in gyms for the poor lighting and the absolutely awful acoustics, not because I feel it’s an inappropriate backdrop for a show. They set it up nicely: we had a spacious stage area, roughly two or three feet off the ground, with a backdrop that masked the basketball hoop behind it, and the chairs were arranged with three rows on either side of the stage and an uncounted number of rows the length of the entire gym. I assumed that we probably wouldn’t get so many audience members to necessitate the use of row 27 underneath the opposite basketball hoop, but I was wrong. The gym was packed for both shows!

And I thought both shows went decently. I felt slightly aware of how loudly I needed to speak in the echoing gym, which kept me in my head a little more than I’d like. This especially happens in more intimate moments, in which I sometimes get the impression that I’m yelling at the top of my lungs. Nothing says ‘romance’ like being six inches from someone and yelling sweet nothings in their face.

Also, because we had audience on the floor on the sides, rather than on the raised stage with us, we had to change the configuration for Merchant. None of the actors ever leave the stage during this production (and for those of you who are wondering, no, this is not an original staging practice); instead, we ‘exit’ by sitting on benches on the stage left, right, and upstage. These benches are interspersed with the integral on-stage or thrust parts of the audience. However, had we set up these benches on stage in Orrville, we would have been sitting above the audience for the whole show, thus blocking their view fully and completely. So, instead, we put the benches on the floor with the audience (with the exception of the upstage benches). This certainly changed the energy of the show, in a manner that seemed for the worse to me until we reached the courtroom scene; however, Aaron said it was the best that the show had ever been because the energy had really opened up. I realised, of course, in retrospect, that I perhaps felt worse because I was giving more of my energy away, rather than keeping some of it confined within our normal ‘box’ of actors and immediate audience.

And speaking of aforementioned actors-staying-on-stage-for-the-whole-show situation, Ginna nearly passed out during the courtroom scene, for lack of water, and for an excess of costume. (We put our judge robes and silly barrister wigs on top of sweaters, dresses, and ultimately corsets.) Ginna was trying to be brave and not take a clandestine water-bottle on stage, but I suppose that ends the opera singer drinking in the midst of her aria debate.

We had talkbacks after both shows, which was especially lovely because these audiences were so kind. A moment of great drama occurred when a visiting friend of Alisa’s (Alisa, Chris, and Ginna are all Ohio natives) gave her a box of homemade cookies during the talkback and they were partially spilled all over the floor in the hand-off. I was so moved that I leapt to my feet, crying, “O! Tragedy! Pathos! Forget The Merchant of Venice, that’s heartbreaking!” I am aware that I am ridiculous, and I suppose at that point, the entire audience may also have reached that awareness, had they not been distracted by the Great Cookie Tragedy of aught-seven. As we are actors, we ate the fallen cookies with the kind of acceptance and sympathy befitting people of our trade, who must learn to accept and sympathise in order to embody other human beings, and also who spend a certain portion of their life starving.

In recreational news, I played my first-ever game of laser tag. I absolutely loved it, and our team won, much thanks to Mssrs. Daniel Kennedy and Evan Hoffmann, and little thanks to me. I prophesied that I would be the lowest scorer, a fate that I escaped only because we suspect Scot’s gun was not working properly, a fact which all of my friends were too tactful to mention when they congratulated me for escaping my self-prophecy.