Roving Shakespeare to Launch
First Festival of Plays

This festival is the culmination of the MFA process for Roving Shakespeare, the unique graduate company that combines students' diverse regional backgrounds and shared knowledge of early modern theatre to bring the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries to available audiences.

The first offering produced in their season, The Comedy of Errors is an educational show, complete with workshops to aid in touring it to local schools: a movement and character-inspired workshop based around the company’s commedia dell’arte work, finding inspiration and stage direction with text, and working with Shakespeare’s verse.

Roving Shakespeare uses clever staging and minimal properties in their original tellings of The Tempest and The Sea Voyage. What makes these shows unique, however, is that the company splits into two casts of five actors, who then enact the entirety of each show's characters. For both plays, “the five actors fill the stage, becoming scenery, and creating a soundscape in more imaginative and stimulating ways than if there were a full cast of actors on the stage with a full set,” says Angelina LaBarre, director of The Sea Voyage.

For their performance of King Lear, Roving Shakespeare uses the 1608 first quarto version. The company strives to recreate the rehearsal conditions for which Shakespeare originally wrote the play, imposing a series of restrictions upon the production based on research into early modern theatrical practices. Most notably, the cast of King Lear worked without the aid of a director or designers. MFA faculty member and professional actor Matt Davies guest stars as the beleaguered Lear.

The tangled story of As You Like It depicts Rosalind as she flees into the Forest of Arden to find her banished father, accompanied by her cousin Celia and the fool Touchstone. During their journey, the characters meet lovelorn shepherds, a camp of lords-turned-foresters, and Orlando, a young gentleman who has fled from his hateful brother. While in disguise, Rosalind cleverly navigates her love for Orlando and his love for her. And, as a true Shakespearean comedy, weddings and reunions abound.

All performances are "pay-as-you-like-it”. The Comedy of Errors runs forty-five minutes. All other productions run at or just a bit over two hours. Roving Shakespeare’s final bow comes with this festival, which marks the finale of a yearlong program, in which members focused on company dynamics, as well as acting, directing, marketing, stage design, and other diverse aspects of stagecraft.

March 31, 7:30pm: The Sea Voyage, by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger
April 1, 2pm: The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
April 1, 7:30pm: King Lear, by William Shakespeare
April 2, 2pm: The Comedy of Errors, by William Shakespeare
April 2, 7:30pm: As You Like It, by William Shakespeare

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