By Rachel MacNeill
Four-hundred-year-old literature was turned on its head at a bookstore earlier this month at the first Secret Shakespeare Experiment from A Company of Fools, a local theatre group.
The show began with an expletive-laced debate about changing the Canadian national anthem to the Hockey Night in Canada theme song, followed by the creative merits of Buffy the Vampire Slayer versus Shakespeare.
Stuffed into Elgin Street store Perfect Books, a 20-person audience was treated to a little Frank Sinatra, a few ridiculous dance moves and an Indonesian puppet version of Romeo and Juliet. The puppets ended the show with a fervent argument about patriarchal messages in Shakespeare.
The Experiment embodies one of the show’s opening lines: “Nothing should be sacred in theatre, because theatre is sacred.”
“We’re trying to take Shakespeare out of its comfy little case,” says Scott Florence, the experiments’ artistic director and actor. “People often excuse offensive messages in classic work because it is the ‘art of an era,’” he adds.
“But maybe that’s bullshit. These experiments are meant to confront how Shakespeare fits into a modern dialogue.”
So how do two lovers leaping around a bookstore to Strangers in the Night relate to Shakespeare?
“We’re trying to pick apart the question, ‘What is performance?’” Florence says.
He says the company uses Shakespeare as a starting point to explore deeper issues.
“It really explores the question, should we still be performing racist, sexist, patriarchal, hierarchical theatre?” says Florence.
Florence says the Fools are trying to explore how Shakespeare relates to the modern world by literally fitting Shakespeare-inspired shows into a modern venue, such as Perfect Books.
“They’re so wacky,” said Barbara McInnes, a financial contributor to the company, at the show. “Their strength is to make Shakespeare accessible to people.”
“I was puzzled when it started,” said audience member Arthur Matheson. “But then it began to make some kind of crazy sense.”
He said he plans to come to the next few shows to see how the experiment develops.
The next three Secret Shakespeare Experiment shows will also be performed in unconventional spaces.
In May, the audience will meet at Perfect Books, but the venue will remain a mystery until that night, Florence says.
The summer show will be in Florence’s minivan, with a six-person-per show audience capacity. The final show will be in an office area, which is the epitome of modern space, he says.
Experimenting with space is one way of exploring the essence of theatre, and what it can mean for its audience, says Florence.
“The arts are how we learn to be human and how to exist within a social web,” Florence says.
Theatre helps audience members to explore what it means to be human, he says, because it allows people to see how they interact with each other.
“There’s no manual for that,” he says.