Author Archives: Shakespeare

Playing with Puppets at the 2024 Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival

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By Jennifer Birkett

Greg Corbino’s journey to becoming a puppet designer started when he was a little kid. As he says, “it’s something I have always done and was interested in,” but it was not until he encountered Bread and Puppet Theatre in college that he really became fully invested in it. Much of Corbino’s style–specifically his use of cheap, resourceful materials (like cardboard and papier-mâché) along with a focus on colors and shapes, as well as building puppets to scale–is influenced by Peter Schumann, the co-founder of Bread and Puppet Theater, whose work really took off in the 1960s making giant puppets with kids in the Bronx.

Unlike the puppets many audiences encounter in musicals like The Lion King and Into the Woods, Corbino’s puppets focus on accessibility, both in material and in utility. In other words, they do not require significant training to operate. As Corbino highlights, compared to silicones, foams, or tricky items like toxic glues often used in theatrical puppetry, “we are using materials used by communities all over the world for parades, protests, and elementary school plays.” The puppets are representations of a way of working, one which requires many hands and collaboration. Indeed, while designing and building these puppets, Corbino worked alongside volunteer company members, as well as artisan Aimee Cole, who brought a unique costuming perspective, and director Sara Holdren, whose Arden world inspired Corbino’s interplay between color and light. Ultimately, the puppets reflect the collective theme of community central to this production of As You Like It.

As an audience member, you can expect large-scale 3D puppets, one which requires 5 actors to operate, but also a herd of deer that are flat and two dimensional. A new design for Corbino, the deer legs are articulated with a series of bolts and elastics allowing them to appear to leap across the stage. This choice to emphasize the “gesture” of a deer rather than go for a “realistic” one leans into the age-old magic of theatre, the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief. As Corbino puts it, “we are asking the audience to do the work of joining us in this magical place where objects come to life.”

We hope you’ll join us at this magical production this summer. While this is the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival’s first foray into puppetry, we have a feeling it won’t be our last.

“Setting the Scene” with Shakespeare at Notre Dame’s Jennifer Birkett and As You Like It scenic designer Inseung Park

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By Jennifer Birkett

Birkett: As You Like It, like Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, is a play where we expect two very distinct settings and a bold contrast between the two. When you started designing the set, what was your inspiration for these two designs and the transition between the two?

Park: The beginning of the production process, before I actually met with Sara (the director), I thought about how we might ‘tweak’ things. With As You Like It, there is always a stereotypical sense that Arden will have foliage and be a woodland. I wanted to show something visually unexpected. When I met with Sara, she brought a lot of ideas that connected with other theatre audience work, one being Bread and Puppet Theatre and the other being Geoff Sobelle’s Home production. Those were are key inspirations for where we headed in our designs.

Birkett: How do we evoke a clear shift from the court to Arden when both are more interior spaces that exterior spaces?

Park: Well, we wanted to get away from focusing on a physical location and focus more on the concept and feeling of the place: What is the concept for the court? What is the concept for Arden? For Arden we focused on collaboration, utopian equality, people doing things together, rather than focus on whether we were inside or outside. We also pulled in a lot more design collaboration as well with the props, lighting, and puppetry.

Birkett: So what about the court? My understanding is this production does not have a specifically designated time period, but did you have any look or idea that guided your concept of that space?

Park: The court needed to be a visual contrast to Arden. We knew Arden was going to be crazy and complicated, so the court would be simpler, with more solid lines, and less props. Essentially, the set is rather stark at the beginning and then it becomes crazy! We begin with simplicity, an operational feel, and then later move to something more festive.

Birkett: Did you have a favorite part of the set design? What about a difficult part, any piece of the set that just kept giving you trouble?

Park: My favorite part of this set is the movement. We are still using the fly system, but not completely. The set opens up in exciting ways that allows the actors to work together to build the new setting. The most difficult part of designing the set was, actually, also that collaboration element which meant the design was not really complete until we put together all of the elements, props, lights, puppets, etc. I couldn’t really predict what would happen.

Birkett: Well, you wanted it to be unexpected! I’m sure our audience is going to be excited by this set and all its thoughtful details. Thank you so much for chatting with us today. We cannot wait for opening night!

Park: Thank you.

“As You Like It” and Finding “much virtue in ‘if’”

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By Jennifer Birkett

In the late 1590s, William Shakespeare wrote a theatrical comedy based on the then popular romance titled Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge. As in Lodge’s romance, Shakespeare’s As You Like It centers on Rosalind, a vibrant female heroine, who dons a male disguise to flee the unwelcoming court of her uncle, Duke Frederick, and escape into the forest to find her banished father, Duke Senior (Frederick’s older brother and rightful Duke). While in disguise, she comes upon Orlando, the youngest brother of Oliver de Boys, who has fled into the forest seeking safety from his violent brother. Although the two have met before, Orlando does not recognize Rosalind in her male clothes. She takes the opportunity to use her disguise to befriend Orlando and sort out if his supposed “love” for her is sincere or not. Of course, it would not be a Shakespeare play if there were no other plot lines to entertain the audience and further complicate Rosalind’s journey.

There are multiple legends tied to As You Like It. One being that Shakespeare, himself, played Adam, the old servant of the de Boys household, in the original production. Another being that the title refers to Shakespeare’s frustration at meeting a growing audience’s demands: “Fine, have it as you like it!” However, as Sara Holdren, the director of this summer’s NDSF production, notes, the title also hints at the play’s deep longing. Woven beneath the lighthearted comedy is a desire for a world as one likes it, where one can love freely, be seen genuinely, and escape artificiality.

As a pastoral comedy, As You Like It juxtaposes a court corrupted by the hatred of brothers with the simple communal existence in the forest of Arden. When Orlando arrives in Arden, he observes that “there is no clock in the forest.” This play, and this NDSF 2024 production, invites both its characters and audience to set aside the stifling demands of everyday life and embrace alternate realities. What might the world look like if, for example, women had the same courtesies as men? What if class did not matter? Or if there were no greed for power? Or if we treated the earth with more care? As Touchstone, the play’s clown puts it, there’s “much virtue in ‘if.’”

As You Like It is an experimentation in “if.” From its abundance of song to its philosophical musings on performativity and its all-too-convenient conclusion, the play exposes Shakespeare’s writerly process, putting more stock in asking questions than answering them. It invites an openness to revise, to think again, and to imagine otherwise. Similarly, this summer’s production invites us to reimagine our traditional notions of gender, community, politics, and even Shakespeare to inquire after a world “as we like it.” We hope you’ll set aside your clock to join us in the Forest of Arden this Aug 20-September 1st! As an audience member, you can expect to be enchanted by the festival’s first-ever incorporation of puppets, the bold transition from a tight-laced court setting to a artistic Arden, and original songs performed live on stage by our actors.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Spring 2024 Tour: Entry #9

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By Sam Hill

For the Lord heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners.
Psalm 69:33

And so just like that, we entered our final week of the tour. Looking back it felt like it had been a long tour, but also a short tour. When I think back to all the places we have been: Indiana, New York State, Vermont, Texas, California and Alabama, it feels like we have been away for a long time. But then again, it some ways it feels like yesterday that we were doing our read-through in Covent Garden, London.

Florence is a pretty, affluent town in northern Alabama. Its high street leads up to the university which is a short walk from our hotel. If you turn out of our hotel and walk down the hill, you find yourself at the Tennessee River. It’s big and beautiful, people fish on the river bank and you feel like Huckleberry Finn might pass by on a raft at any given moment.

We had three shows to do here, one at the university, one for high schoolers and one at Limestone Correctional Facility: a prison about an hour and half outside of Florence. Most of us had never performed in a prison before, including me. Going into the building is an austere experience, but once you are inside (literally and figuratively) you sort of forget you are in a prison. We were shown into a room, where we would perform, which was reminiscent of a church hall. The floor had been mopped and cleaned so well we could have had our lunch on it. We set up and the audience entered.

What struck us most was the focus this audience had on the play. Every single man was paying a deep attention to the play. They had been studying A Midsummer Night’s Dream through a program run by the University of North Alabama. They were well equipped with a ‘No Fear Shakespeare’ script in hand (this edition offers a modern English version of the story alongside the original), pencils and a list of characters in the play. They were to listen, to learn and to get out of prison life for a couple of hours.

After the show we ran a Q and A, spoke to the prisoners, and signed their copies of the play, which were kept carefully and in pristine condition. We were thanked a lot and were reminded how important it was to them that we had come. It was a profound experience. I have thought about it a lot since. And will think about it a lot, probably throughout my life. Of course, I’m sure some men in that prison have done very bad things and some might even show little to no remorse; but the people we met seemed so normal. Perhaps, a fit of anger, a tragedy, a tough, tough life, forces someone to do something rash, they get caught and that’s it: prison. And then once you’ve been to prison, done your time and get released, is it easy to establish a normal life? I don’t know, but the experience made me think. The walls we put up are built on sand.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Spring 2024 Tour: Entry #8

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By Sam Hill

As we flew into California, the plane did that scary tipping motion as it turned to have a straight path to the runway. Whilst, as a nervous flyer, I find this frankly terrifying, it did offer an excellent view of L.A. The view was rows and rows of palm trees and pools. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many palm trees and pools in my life.

The following day I was lucky as I had a 6pm class allowing me most of the day to explore L.A. I opted for a trip to the Getty Museum. The Getty is perched on a hill overlooking L.A. You can get a small tram or walk up from the car park to the museum itself. I opted for the tram. It’s more scenic and I was put off by disconcerting signs on the walking route warning of cayotes, mountain lions and rattle snakes. Yeah, the tram is good for me.

The Getty has a reasonable collection of art, but maybe not as impressive compared to the Art Institute in Chicago or the Met. But in terms of the building and setting, the Getty is a work of art in and of itself. The modern building blends the natural and the man-made with a seamless ease. A man-made waterfall cuts through the rock and into a basin at the head of the garden. Flowers are arranged into intricate arcs and circles. Cacti are nestled together looking out onto L.A in the prickly warmth.

Citrus College, where we were working, is a community college. This means that many of the students are receiving a free (or practically free) higher education. The students are bright, grounded, intelligent. They have an excellent performing arts program and we engaged with many talented and promising young actors. When we performed for them, in the round, we found a new energy to the show. Something in having to slightly adapt the blocking for the theatre and the kind energy brought by the audience made for one of our favorite shows we’ve done here.

This week was unusual as we had a full week end off. A full week end off in L.A! Saturday I took the tram into Little Tokyo to treat myself to lunch. I then pottered to a local brewery to sample some of their produce, before meeting Lucy and her boyfriend George (aka G-force) to stroll along Venice beach.

As I have found with much of America, L.A is a city of extremes. On the one hand you have Beverly Hills, the Hollywood sign, Venice Beech, Malibu: the list goes on. But on the other, you see tents set up on the side of roads where people shelter, a woman passed out on the street, the homeless riding on trams for stop after stop after stop just to have somewhere to sit and then a man inhaling a misty vapor from a pipe to get away from it all. I left questioning the city and questioning myself.