Few theatrical pairings would seem more natural than Shakespeare's Hamlet and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
The first, one of the Bard's most well-known tragedies, introduced expressions like "to thine own self be true" and "neither a borrower nor a lender be" into the English language. It features famous soliloquies like "To be or not to be," which have become synonymous with the very craft of acting.
The second, an absurdist comedy by contemporary playwright Stoppard, takes two minor characters from Hamlet and imagines what they get up to when they're not on stage. Like Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead — or RGAD for short — takes up existential questions and involves the same core characters. What the two plays lack in similarity they make up for in counterpoint.
Since founding the Spokane Shakespeare Society in 2021, the organization's executive director, Amanda Cantrell, has wanted to feature the two plays "in rep." Shorthand for repertory, it's theater parlance for works staged by the same pool of actors during the same timeframe but in rotation.
This year, she and the Spokane Shakespeare Society (S3 for short) are making good on that — not once, but twice. Following an initial run that took place earlier this summer, from July 20 to Aug. 6, S3 is preparing to bring the plays back to area parks, starting today through Sept. 17. On alternating nights, outdoor audiences can unfold a lawn chair or spread out a blanket and catch RGAD, directed by Pamela Kingsley, or Hamlet, directed by Cantrell herself.
"The crowds really enjoyed it," Cantrell says of their first three-week outing. "We had lots of people come out for both nights and watch the plays back to back. People thought that Jeffrey St. George as Hamlet was really powerful and amazing. And people laughed a lot with Preston [Loomer] and David [Hardie], who are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. We had amazing feedback."
For this second run, things have been altered slightly. Manito, Riverfront and Sky Prairie Parks — in that order — are still the venues on consecutive weeks. But the shows themselves are swapped. RGAD is being staged on Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons, and Hamlet is on Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons.
"That way, if all you could do was come on a Friday night, you now have the chance to see the other show," Cantrell says.
Scheduling isn't the only way that Spokane Shakespeare Society is looking to accommodate its audiences. Along with adding Five Mile neighborhood's Sky Prairie Park to the mix of outdoor venues and turning both weekend performances into matinees this season, Cantrell and her collaborators have pared Hamlet's traditionally lengthy running time to just over two hours.
"Shakespeare has a tendency to say things more than once, so we looked for areas where he was describing things multiple times," she says. "For that I tapped a number of resources. Jeffrey St. George read through the script and helped me cut things. Erick Wolfe, my co-director who's a Shakespeare scholar, also helped me cut it."
The part where Hamlet's ship is attacked by pirates and he then retells the entire story to Horatio? That type of exchange has been snipped. But in a play that's teeming with quotable lines, they were careful not to excise the more familiar material.
"There are lines in Hamlet that I'm sure 90 percent of audiences would never even think of being in Hamlet but would recognize immediately. Identifying those lines and keeping them was of the utmost importance to us," says St. George, an actor and set designer who originally hails from Coeur d'Alene and is this year's artist in residence at S3.
For St. George, staging these plays in repertory was equally important. Like the rest of the troupe, he appears as the same character in both shows. As Hamlet, though, he takes a diminished role in RGAD because Stoppard's play moves Shakespeare's bit parts to the fore.
"Rep is somewhat rarely done, and so the opportunity to expose our community members and our artists to the concept of rep and what that looks like, as well as the challenges it poses and the joys it elicits, is something I always wanted to share," he says.
And on occasion, that act of generosity is met with what St. George describes as an "exciting human element."
"Doing outdoor theater has always been a different beast. Working outdoors in the public, our rehearsal space is also in the public, and so we interact with the public regularly. Sometimes that's as innocuous as someone coming up and saying, 'Hey, what are you guys doing?' And sometimes,'' he laughs, "it's a bunch of teenagers riding around on Lime scooters haranguing us."
Undaunted, St. George sees "everyone" — even their occasional harassers — as potential satisfied audience members.
"There are a lot of people who think that Shakespeare isn't for them because they had a bad experience in high school or they've been forced to read the text. Shakespeare is meant to be seen, and it's meant to be performed by those who are capable of performing it. And we fulfill all of those qualities." ♦
