The cast members of the upcoming production of “The Tempest” didn’t have to worry about fitting rehearsals into their schedules.
There were none.
When Janus Theatre Company performs Shakespeare’s work Aug. 17-19, it will be unrehearsed — just as it was done back in the Bard’s day.
“The way the plays are done today are not the way the plays were done then,” Director Sean Hargadon said.
With Elizabethan theaters staging multiple plays throughout the week and daylight at a premium, there wasn’t a lot of rehearsal — if any at all, he said. Instead, actors looked to their scripts for direction.
“You would learn your part. You would come in for the performance and you take maybe an hour or so and you would learn certain things — if you had stage combat or if you had dances, things like that that you had to do — and that was it,” Hargadon said. “Then you’d go.”
“Plays were fast and they were physical, like sporting events,” he said. “They weren’t slow and plotting,”
The all-female cast of “The Tempest” will do just that when the show is staged at Elgin Artspace Lofts in downtown Elgin. Performances are at 7 p.m. Aug. 17-18 and 6 p.m. Aug. 19. All performances are free, with donations welcome. Complimentary refreshments will be served.
“It’s open for everybody. We’re trying to make it as open as possible,” Hargadon said. “We want to try to get people to think of the idea a little bit different than your typical theater-going experience where you sit in the dark and you’re all quiet. That’s not the case. The lights are all on, we all see each other.”
The production marks the beginning of Janus’s three-year Elgin Shakespeare Project, which explores the techniques of Shakespeare’s theater and its practitioners during Elizabethan times. For the first year, cast members will perform with scrolls containing just their lines and cues.
“There’s clues in the script as to how the actors should act, because there wasn’t directors then like there is today. The actors would get their lines, and maybe a few words for their cues,” Hargadon said. “They wouldn’t know what anybody else was playing or what the roles were. You had to learn theirs.”
Lines will be memorized for productions taking place in the second year, and in the third year original pronunciation will be used.
Hargadon chose “The Tempest” for the project’s first production because it’s a play people have heard of, but it’s not as popular as some of Shakespeare’s other plays. The tale of revenge and redemption has moments of drama and high farce.
“It will also be fun to see how the (scroll) technique works in those circumstances,” he said. “Because doing the technique with a comedy is a blast, but this is a little different. We’re going to be juggling two different genres.”
Because the show is unrehearsed, the cast of eight actors will rely upon their experience as the play unfolds.
“These are professional actors. They’re working off their own skill sets, their instincts. There’s quite a bit of spontaneity and improvisational qualities to the play and the performance. It’s always fun to watch that,” Hargadon said. “The reality is they don’t know where it’s going. Even if you generally know the plot/synopsis of ‘The Tempest,’ when you’re out there and you’re just going off you’re lines and your cue come up and you don’t know who’s going to say it next, it creates quite an exciting experience to watch.”
‘The Tempest’
When: Aug. 17-19
Where: Elgin Artspace Lofts, 51 S. Spring St., Elgin
Tickets: Free
Information: www.janusplays.com
