A steamy July afternoon and the campus is quiet. But the rehearsal studio at Yulman Theater pulses with activity as actors prepare for the Saratoga Shakespeare Company's upcoming production.
“Who usually wears the nose?” shouts director Bill Finlay. “I've been wearing the arrow in the head!” comes an actor's reply. In between, jokes fly, costumes fly, red-sneakered feet fly across the floor in acrobatic abandon. Kazoos kazoom.
It's Shakespeare in action, but not just a Shakespeare piece. It's all of them-tragedies, comedies, monologues, soliloquies and sonnets-mixed in one madcap adventure known as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare [Abridged], to be performed by the Saratoga Shakespeare Company (SSC) in historic Congress Park.
“We're the only resident professional theater company in Saratoga Springs,” says Finlay, associate professor of theater and director of the Yulman Theater. “We've got a great cast, mostly out of L.A., Boston and New York City, and we use as many locals as we can.
“Everything is so intense,” he adds. “We put together a major show in two weeks; two weeks of rehearsals, followed by two weeks of performances.”
A Saratoga resident, Finlay launched the nonprofit ssc in 2000 to fill what he saw as a cultural void in a town known more for thoroughbred horses than for theater. Finlay serves as ssc's artistic director.
The summer 2005 performance is a veritable midsummer dream for the actors, who energetically romped through the lightning-paced comedy and wordplay. Othello is performed as a rap, Titus Andronicus as a cooking show, and Hamlet reduced to two minutes, recited backwards.
Shakespeare in Saratoga Springs has become increasingly a Union affair.
“There are a lot of us from Union, and that's something worth celebrating,” said Patricia L. Culbert, Union artist in residence in theater and dance and director of the SCC's Intern Company.
The Complete Works features three actors portraying 75 characters in 90 minutes. One of three is Spencer S. Christie '01, a seasoned Shakespearean actor from Boston who has performed with such groups as the Berkshire Theatre Festival and American Repertory Theater/MIXAT. Union fans will remember him as El Gallo in The Fantasticks. This is his second season with the troupe.
Production Stage Manager Sara E. Friedman '98, a member of Actors Equity who lives in New York, is back for her third summer. “There's a special vibe,” she says. “There is always a large group of interns and Union students. It's fun to come back and see what they're doing and talk about Union.”
Union students who are part of the Intern (or Second) Company include Carly Hirschberg '06, assistant director; Nina Kalinkos '06, assistant state manager; Justin Silvestri '07; and Joey Hunziker '08. Some of the students make it to Broadway-in Saratoga, that is-where, dressed in Elizabethan garb, they perform Shakespearean scenes and swordfights to hook passersby into coming to the free performances in the park.
“We guarantee our interns a performance opportunity,” Finlay says, noting they also are eligible to join the Actor's Equity Membership Candidate Program (EMC), something few theater groups offer.
Back at the Yulman, meanwhile, there's more activity than meets the eye. Lloyd Waiwaiole, the College's costumer, is in his element in the basement-level costume shop, busily sewing and creating.
“With 75 characters changing clothes, wigs and hats constantly, the challenge is that lots of clothes have to do tricks in some way,” he says. “They have to fall off or change from a cloak in the beginning of a scene to a hooded cape at the end. One of my jobs is to make the characters instantaneously recognizable with one or two pieces.”
Finlay says he decided on the Complete Works this year because feedback after last summer's Romeo & Juliet “included such a wide range of suggestions of the Bard's work that we couldn't narrow it down to just one.
“So we decided to do them all.”
THE CAST OF UNION CHARACTERS
The Equity Company
Professor Bill Finlay, director
Carly Hirschberg '06, assistant director
Nina Kalinkos '06, assistant stage manager
Spencer Christie '01, actor
Lloyd Waiwaiole, Union costume shop
Sara Friedman '98
Second Company:
Carly Hirschberg '06, assistant Director
Justin Silvestri '07, actor
Joey Hunziker '08, actor
Patsy Culbert, guest lecturer and director of interns Shakespeare