Mountain Shakespeare Festival Blog

Mountain Shakespeare’s 2008 Season

June 20th, 2008

Welcome to our third season of summer theatre in our mountain community. The 2008 offering of the Mountain Shakespeare Festival ushers in three firsts for our growing company: It is our first season doing a non-Shakespearean play as we present the depression era comedy, “You Can’t Take It With You;” it is our first season in the Pine Mountain Club Gazebo adding lights and a full stage setting; and our first season of rotating repertory.

Rotating rep, as it is called, puts two full productions into alternating performances which makes it possible for an audience member to spend a relatively short time in town and see a lot of theatre. It also offers the rare delight for the audience to see actors portray widely different roles in the two plays. We have, for instance, an actress playing the quirky Mrs. Penny Sycamore - a happily married playwright/painter in “You Can’t Take it With You” - and Adriana - a very unhappily married aristocrat in Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors.” Penny is in love and loves life. Adriana deals with a wayward husband, so she thinks, and jealousy on a grand scale.

These two plays, so different in so many ways, have a thread the links them. They are both about the uniting of very different worlds and the coming together of different walks of life. In “You Can’ Take It With You” it is the meeting of opposing views of what constitutes the “American Way,” and in “The Comedy of Errors” it is the reunion of long lost siblings who find, in each other’s worlds, a better understanding of self. Both of these classics are considered among the most highly successful comedies in our language and have enjoyed a rich and successful production history.

To say that producing these gems is a challenge for our young company would be an understatement. It is a challenge for the actors, the directors, crew, volunteers and our resources. But this is our mission: to provide a truly professional theatre experience that will entice both our local audience and regional neighbors to “Stay, and breathe awhile” and it can’t be done without some “perspiration,” as the character Kolenkov so aptly states in “You Can’t Take It With You.”

So, relax, breathe the clean air and enjoy these two comedy classics, we’ll take care of the perspiration.

Peter Kjenaas
Artistic Director

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