WRITTEN BY JUDY HARRISON
One of Maine’s most frequent summer visitors is William Shakespeare. The Bard doesn’t literally appear but his plays are performed regularly in Maine parks and theaters.
The tradition of performing out-of-doors goes back to Shakespeare’s time when plays had to be presented during daylight hours. This year Shakespeare will be performed outside in Brewer, Prospect, Camden, Ellsworth and Portland.
Ten Bucks Theatre Company
Ten Bucks Theatre Company has produced one of Shakespeare’s plays outside nearly every summer for 20 years. The company started performing Shakespeare in 2004, two years after the Penobscot Theatre Company ended its Maine Shakespeare Festival, which performed for eight years on the Bangor Waterfront.
“The public consistently asked Ten Bucks to take up the mantle of producing outdoor Shakespeare,” said Julie Arnold Lisnet, a co-founder of the company. “In 2004, Shakespeare Under the Stars was born.”
The company began performing that year in Indian Trail Park in Brewer. In 2010, Ten Bucks took its show to Fort Knox in Prospect. This year the group will perform “Henry V” in late July and early August.
“I love both spaces, but the Fort is definitely easier on the actors vocally,” Lisnet said. “We’re still outside, but there are these amazing granite walls that mean we don’t have to work as hard to be heard. On the other hand, Indian Trail has allowed us to have a few critters wander through over the years — a black cat during our first ‘Macbeth’ in 2006 caused quite the stir.”
Camden Shakespeare Festival
The Camden Shakespeare Festival, which performs at the amphitheater next to the library overlooking the harbor, will perform “Comedy of Errors.” The company will also take the show to Monson for one performance.
“The Camden Amphitheatre is not huge, but it is the most beautiful outdoor performance space that I have ever seen,” Artistic Director Stephen Legawiec said. “It is an honor and a joy to perform there. Many of our shows use the landscape of the space, which seems the point of being there, rather than cover it up with set pieces.”
And More
The Theatre at Monmouth, Maine’s official Shakespeare Company, will present “Much Ado About Nothing” in Cumston Hall. The Fenix Theatre Company will perform “Love’s Labor’s Lost” in Deering Oaks Park in Portland. The Grand in Ellsworth will perform excerpts with a Downeast twist for The Bard in a city park.
The biggest challenge for outdoor performances is the often unpredictable weather. In 2006, Ten Bucks canceled no shows for rain, but in 2013, five of the 12 performances of “The Tempest” were canceled. Legawiec said that on performance days, he’s “checking the weather 10 times a day.”
“We are extremely lucky to have a rain space, which is the Parish Hall at St. Thomas’s Episcopal Church,” he said. “The challenge of performing outdoors is when to make the call to move inside based on the forecast.”
Like non-Shakepearian theater companies, those devoted to The Bard are struggling to recover from the pandemic. The Monmouth company that has traditionally produced two of Shakespeare’s plays each summer is just doing one this season along with “Shakespeare’s Will,” a one-woman show about Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife.
Prior to the pandemic, the Camden company also produced two of Shakespeare’s plays each summer, a comedy and a tragedy or history. It has stuck with one show a season since 2020.
“The reason that we are only doing one show a summer is chiefly a casting issue,” Legawiec said. “Casting two shows requires more actors.”
This year he is doing the show with nine actors compared to the 14 cast in the 2016 production.
One of the things Shakespeare’s plays allows for is casting women in men’s roles. Ten Bucks often does this and has cast a female in the role of King Henry this summer. Women were forbidden from appearing onstage in England until 1660, 44 years after Shakespeare’s death. All the female parts prior to that were performed by men dressed as women.
“I honestly don’t see any disadvantages in cross casting women in male roles,” Lisnet said. “Having played many male roles over the years in Shakespeare productions I think a woman brings a different perspective on iconic roles that audiences know well. One of my personal biggest thrills was playing Marc Antony in ‘Julius Caesar.’ His fierceness was liberating.”
