Shakespeare as ‘planned improv’

Thirty-two actors, 86 parts in two hours representing over 20 plays — just another typical Fred Yockers’ production.

This season it’s two plays, based on Shakespeare’s works, that have the Friday Harbor Middle School Players busy.

The school’s presentation of “Hello Shakespeare” and “All the World’s a Stage” opens 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday at the San Juan Community Theatre. Tickets are available at the theater box office or by calling 378-3210.

On a bare stage, with all the backstage equipment and goings-on visible to the audience, the play breaks the dramatic “fourth wall”, Yockers said. “The actors will be walking out into the audience, saying a line and asking someone watching, ‘What do you think? Did that work?’”

The two plays are send-ups of two dozen of Shakespeare’s better-known works. “Shakespeare wrote 38 plays total,” Yockers said. “These two plays give the kids a chance to speak the greatest lines from most of them.”

The beauty of doing this kind of theater is that the young actors will have an opportunity to do “planned improv.”

“It’s hysterical,” Yockers said. “Kids at this level are so fresh that even when they screw up, they’re funny.” Screwing up, he adds, is part of the dramatic process. “This can teach them to use it, to get right back into character. It’s very good training.”

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