The World is a Stage

Shakespeare would be right at home if he were to attend one of the Rooted Voyageurs free performances of his play, The Tempest, which they will present at wineries, a cidery, a distillery and farmers markets this summer.

“He was writing for the immediacy and importance of community experience,” said Devante Owens, artistic director of the troupe, which is composed of actors working throughout the Berkshires. “Theatre is a collaborative art. We need you to come—that’s why we don’t charge any fee. We want everyone to be able to come.”

Theatre is interactive. The actors feed off the energy of the crowd, getting energy from the audience’s reaction. “We have a barebones set because we need to pick it up to move it to the next venue,” he said, “and when we are not on stage we sit among you. When you are working in live theatre, you know exactly how it’s going.”

Owens said the open-air performances have much the same feel as theatre in Shakespeare’s day when theaters were open arenas or playhouses that had room for up to 3,000 people. People did not sit all the time and it was not quiet during the performance. The audience could walk around, eat and drink during the play. It cheered, booed and sometimes even threw objects at the actors.

“We literally tell our audiences to scream, laugh at the jokes and, if they hate it, to boo. We want to restore Shakespeare as raucous, rowdy communal theatre,” Owens said. “We’re mischievous. We say, ‘Don’t be a good student, talk back to us.’ I don’t think of it as being distracting, it brings me back to the play. If a baby is crying during ‘to be or not to be,’ that’s life. We can’t keep creating theatre in a vacuum.”

Viewers are encouraged to bring their own seating and a picnic or to pick up food from the farmers markets or food trucks at select venues.

Owens, often a performer at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, said the Rooted Voyageurs found their origin in a conversation he had with co-founder and managing producer Zoe Wohlfeld. “We wanted to build community through live theatre and, for me, especially through Shakespeare. Shakespeare didn’t write for just one set people; he wrote for all of us. These characters reflect us back and give pathways into our humanity.”

But the two were realistic. “The costs can be prohibitive for people of our age or of different economic status,” Owens, 27, observed. They met at a theatre camp in the Berkshires where they established a wide network of friends in the arts. It is from this pool of actors working in the region that they draw their actors. “Part of our mission statement is that all the actors are based in the community some way or the other.”

Presenting the play at venues that are open to the public benefits both the players and the businesses. “The venues are open so there are people there,” he explained. “We kind of hope that we bring people to the business and that people at the venue will stop and watch the show.”

The performances are funded through grants and donations. “In January and-February we start reaching out to vineyards, farmers markets and other venues,” he said. “We bring our set, our cast, our props to that place.”

Owens, who describes himself as a “Shakespeare nerd,” said he first came to the Berkshires aged 19 to work at Shakespeare and Company. “That’s where I fell in love with Shakespeare on a different level. I grew up in the South and I never had seen a Shakespearean play. The reason I keep coming back to him is because he teaches more and more about what it’s like to be alive. I can be saying words that are imbued with so much meaning that they will always teach me so much more when I come back to them.”

He said the plays should be enjoyed in dynamic settings. “I think we have to present these plays in ways that are theatre and not literature. They were not written to be read in a classroom. Shakespeare writes in a way for actors to speak to audiences. Shakespeare had a sense of humanity and how to put it on the page and be good for the actor and the audience. It feels good to speak it. Shakespeare technically follows rules but he also breaks a ton of rules—his plays are inherently subversive, inherently wink, wink. He’s naughty and cool.”

And ahead of his time, exploring ideas that are still current today. “Because women could not appear on stage, female roles were performed by boys or men. So, you have all these men, who play women who dress up as men and fall in love with other men—he’s exploring gender,” Owens said.

In The Tempest the concept explored is forgiveness. “I chose The Tempest because I am really interested in forgiveness. There’s a ton of jargon, a lot of psychology speak, but what does it mean to fully forgive someone? This play explores that.

“I wanted to learn more about forgiveness,” he continued. “Before he confronts his enemies, Prospero tells Ariel that ‘The rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance" It is better to forgive than to hate one's enemies. Maybe we can learn a different pathway.”

In the play Prospero, a banished duke wielding powerful magical abilities, glimpses a ship carrying the royal family and seizes the chance to reshape the course of his and his child, Miranda’s lives. Filled with magic, shipwrecks and clowns, Shakespeare’s final play is a plea for communal redemption.

Shakespeare wrote for a different world than today’s and many of his plays are very long. Owens has abridged The Tempest for modern audiences reducing it to 90 minutes. “I cut the plays,” he says confidently. “I have been working with Shakespeare for eight years and I know ‘Billy Shakes’ very well. And I am someone who knows the community very well. There are words I don’t want the audience to hear. He uses the word ‘niggardly,’ which means stingy but some people hear it another way. And he will often liken evil to darkness and blackness and purity to lightness and white. I don’t want to use that imagery and I have no trouble cutting it.”

Would Shakespeare be surprised if he could know that his plays are still being enjoyed 400 years after they were written? “The first thing he would do would be to demand compensation,” Owens said with a laugh. “Then I think he would generally be proud and maybe a little bit confused.”

Interpreting Shakespeare’s words this summer will be Anna Rock as Sebastian and Stephano, Dana M. Harrison as Prospero, Kate Nourse as Gonzalo, Luke Haskell as The Gods, Olivia Thiemann as Miranda and Ariel, Shannon Bell as Alonso, Tanya Gorlow as Antonia and Caliban, and Tom Reynolds as Ferdinand and Trinculo. Owens is directing.

Venues and dates are:
The Spencertown Academy, 790 NY-203, Spencertown, NY, June 21st, 7 PM
Copake Hillsdale Farmers Market, 9140 NY-22, Hillsdale, NY, June 22nd, 11 AM
Chatham Farmer’s Market, 60 Meetinghouse Rd., South Chatham, MA, June 28th and July 12th, 3 PM
Millbrook Vineyards & Winery, 26 Wing Rd., Millbrook, NY, June 30th, 3 PM
Les Trois Emme Winery, 8 Knight Rd., New Marlborough, MA, July 5th, 3 PM
Little Apple Cidery, 178 Orchard Lane, Hillsdale, NY, July 6th, 3 PM
Hudson Valley Distillers, 1727 US-9, Germantown, NY, July 13th, 3 PM