By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Shakespeare’s plays and actual play collide when Beautiful Kids Independent Shakespeare Company brings the Bard’s works into Bowling Green’s City Park.
Since 1997, the Beautiful Kids have localized Shakespeare’s observation that “all the world’s a stage,” and paraded Shakespeare’s panoply of characters across the Needle Hall stage. All within laughing and shouting distance of the swings, slides and picnic table. All within a wooded glade that can stand for parapets of a Danish castle, a battlefield at Agincourt, the Forest of Arden, or the wilds of Prospero’s island.
Ryan Halfhill and Michael Portteus in “Hamlet.”
The productions began in 1997 when a group of Bowling Green State University theater students decided to stage “As You Like It” at Needle Hall, and every year since students, graduates and the friends have returned to stage a Shakespeare play, sometimes two.
The troupe marks its 20th year with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” this week Wednesday, June 1, Thursday, June 2, and Friday, June 3, at 7 p.m.
The tradition has passed down from student to student with little formal structure. Tyler Ward, who was active with the troupe for five years starting in 2005, said because the plays are not done with the constraints of school or work, they have an element of freedom to them. “Beautiful Kids gave me the opportunity to explore Shakespeare on my terms,” he said.
“We were doing it for the love of it. We were doing it because we wanted to do some freakin’ Shakespeare.”
With the semester over, and the cast hanging on in town for a few weeks, “it became really celebratory. It became like a month-long party.”
Brittany Albrecht plays Don John with Griffin Coldiron as Borachio.
Ryan Albrecht, who is producing this year’s show, said that in the last few years, student participation has dropped off. That’s probably because the theater fraternity Theta Phi is no longer active, and that served as an important conduit for Beautiful Kids.
The troupe, he said, is trying to revive the link with theater students in order to keep the troupe going.
Regardless of who’s on stage, the spirit remains. This is Shakespeare on the fly with thrift-store costuming and cubes for a set. That’s part of the charm.
That stripped down staging, said Albrecht, puts the emphasis on the words.
“With a powerful script, good actors, and a place to do it, frequently you can put on the best show in the city,” said Michael Portteus, who has been involved for a decade. This year he’s playing Theseus and Oberon.
“Shakespeare is timeless,” he said. “In every play there’s something beautiful. Everything has an intrinsic value and poetry. There are lots of hidden gems in there. … Things that if you haven’t played it, wouldn’t know how excellent it is.”
Duke Senior’s monologue from “As You Like It” won’t appear in a book of monologues. Still, Portteus said, “that’s some beautiful poetry, and I’ve been utterly privileged to say it out loud in front of audience.”
Shakespeare still offers plenty of space for creativity. “You can do interesting things,” he said. “You can do things you want, and no one is going to complain about it. People are constantly looking for ways to freshen it up and keep it at the forefront of theatrical culture. That’s the beautiful thing.”
Jeffrey Guion said the draw of being able to play Shakespeare pulled him into Beautiful Kids. He was aware of their work even before from when his sister, Cassie, was involved.
Here he had a chance to be on stage. Though he studied theater on campus, he worked mostly back stage. He had two roles, and one, he said, doesn’t really count – he was a giant stalk of celery.
In “Midsummer” he plays one of the lovers Demetrius.
Dee Bonanno said that as a woman, Beautiful Kids opens up the range of parts for actresses. With some notable exceptions, many of Shakespeare’s characters represent the limited view of women at the time – pawns, doe-eyed, naïve maidens.
But Beautiful Kids, out of necessity and design, always has women playing men’s roles. “We bind everything up and add the pencil mustache,” she said.
So Bonanno has played Laertes in “Hamlet,” and she’ll take on the role of Puck.
Beyond the stage, Beautiful Kids gives members the chance to direct. Albrecht, now director of the Bowling Green Performing Arts Center, got his first chance to direct through Beautiful Kids.
Ward, also, was able to learn directing on the Needle Hall stage with a production of “Taming of the Shrew.”
Now Ward teaches theater in a middle school in Oregon. Though he’s not had the chance to perform Shakespeare since leaving BG, he always has his students do a Shakespeare project.
“There is so much fun and joy in doing a Beautiful Kids show it never even occurred to me that I couldn’t do the same kind of show with middle schoolers and bring them the same happiness and joy I got from it.”
The company’s influence has been felt on the local thespian scene. Lionface Productions, founded by Portteus and other Beautiful Kid alumni, shares the Shakespearean DNA with Beautiful Kids. Especially in recent years, there’s been significant overlap in the casts. Only one cast members in the current production has not appeared with Lionface, and Portteus expects she’ll be “bombarded with emails” from the troupe.
What Beautiful Kids did was demonstrate that great theater could be accomplished with limited means, he said.
Beautiful Kids has also had an influence on the young thespians in the Horizon Youth Theater. Guion, his sister Cassie Guion Greenlee, and Albrecht and his wife, Brittany, have worked with the youth troupe.
For all the camaraderie and fun, the company by necessity has to produce its shows on a schedule more akin to a professional company. The cast has four weeks for rehearsals, Albrecht said. “It’s Shakespeare boot camp.”
“The rehearsal process for Beautiful Kids is a flat-out dead sprint,” Portteus said. And the weather adds further complications. He remembers performing a show after only six rehearsals on the stage. Needle Hall does offer indoor space both for performances and rehearsals, but that takes adjustment. “I can’t speak for everybody, but it’s a little deflating,” Portteus said.
Still, he said, that’s far better than being washed out.
Guion noted, though, that when inside, actors still may have to run outside to make an entrance on the other side of the stage.
Being outside in the park adds quirks to the performances.
Cicadas can compete with the actors, Portteus said. And mosquitos can harass the audience.
Kids watching Beautiful Kids rehearse “Hamlet.”
Then there are the kids who wander over from the nearby playground. Sometimes they’ll even come on stage, though this is more a problem during rehearsals than performances, Bonanno said.
Special effects are minimal. Need thunder? Bang on the wall.
Then there’s always the unwelcomed possibility of real thunder and lightning, impending sound and fury that signifies the need for a hasty retreat indoors.
The conditions are not unlike those Shakespeare had to work with, Portteus said. “It’s not the Globe Theatre, but it’s ours.”
