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Auditions for Shakespeare in Delaware Park’s 33rd season will be held on
April 11th and 12th.
Friday April 11th from 4pm to 9pm Callbacks will take place Monday April 14th from 3pm to 9pm.
Auditions will be held at The Market Arcade Building, 617 Main Street,
Buffalo, NY 14203 ALL AUDITIONS ARE BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. Everyone interested in being considered for the 2008 season must make an audition appointment. To arrange an appointment, please call (716) 856-4533, on or after March 31st (no audition appointments will be accepted before the 31st). Leave your name, phone number, date and approximate time you wish to audition. You will be called back with a confirmation of your audition time. This year’s productions include: Actors should prepare one memorized, Shakespearean monologue, not to exceed 2 minutes. If you have played a “principal role” for Shakespeare in Delaware Park in the past you do not need to prepare a monologue, just call for an audition appointment. All Actors are requested to bring a resume/career bio and a head shot to the audition. Please Note: the title role of King Lear and Falstaff in Merry Wives have
been cast.i>
A Fabulous Feast for a Fabulous Cause
One of Buffalo’s greatest gifts is certainly Shakespeare in Delaware Park. The plays are free and something that many of us look forward to not just for entertainment, but as a rite of Western New York’s brilliant summer. In order to keep these grand experiences alive, please consider joining the 14th Annual Fabulous Feast on March 29th. It will be held at the stunning Connecticut Street Armory from 6-10PM.
It’s always a good time with auctions galore (live, fishbowl and silent), dancing, singing and sword fighting! The feast is a show in itself with a cornucopia of wine and beer, hors d’oeuvres, cheddar and broccoli soup, a salad of greens, goat cheese, blood oranges and vinaigrette, chicken and turkey drumsticks, stuffed pork loin, potatoes, macaroni and cheese, vegetables, dessert and coffee. As icing on the cake, per se, the Up Start Crow Awards will also be presented. This is SDP’s biggest and most important fundraiser of the year and really offers something for everyone to enjoy so come one, come all! This year, Shakespeare in Delaware Park will be presenting King Lear and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Shakespearean attire is welcomed but not required. For more information please go to the SDP website: www.shakespeareindelawarepark.org.
Tickets are $65 for members and $75 for non-members. They can be purchased through Paypal on the Feast’s webpage or you can call SDP's office for tickets at 716.856.4533.
Elkin to play Shakespeare’s Lear in Delaware Park opener
Ian McKellen did it. Brian Bedford did it.
And now Saul Elkin, the dean of Buffalo’s theater scene, is going to take what he said is his second and final shot at one of Shakespeare’s meatiest and most lusted-after roles: King Lear.
“I just felt it was a time of my life when I needed to have one more crack at it, and I needed to do a little training and getting the stamina up to do it,” Elkin said. “It’s been cooking in my head.”
Elkin’s turn as the troubled ruler in Shakespeare’s “King Lear” will kick off the 33rd season of Shakespeare in Delaware Park on June 19.
In another casting match made in heaven, the annual outdoor festival will mount the Bard’s comedy “The Merry Wives of Windsor” starting July 24 and starring the comically gifted Norm Sham as Falstaff.
Shakespeare Poetry Contest Success
Last night, BRO/BRM teamed up with WBFO at Shakespeare in the Park. We ran a contest to see who might come up with a winning sonnet/poem praising Buffalo. We collected over 40 entries, and let me tell you, we have some true writers out there. The winner, chosen at random, was one of those people.
Ode to Buffalo Where place, but the Queen City, To be treated to a professional production And the cost—not a pence; available to every soul And this, only one of the extraordinary offerings Let us share our secret, Buffalo, truly the queen, We will share more in the coming days. Special thanks to Tom at Pavlov's Togs, the Shakespeare in the Park people, our great audience, WBFO, and especially WBFO's Gabe DiMaio, whose presentation of the contest was more than we could have hoped for.
'Othello': a perfect confluence of forces Tim Newell and Jolie Garrett star in "Othello," presented by Shakespeare in Delaware Park. A persistent drizzle Thursday night forced Shakespeare in Delaware Park to delay the premiere production of its anticipated season closer, "Othello," by a day.
And though not a drop of rain impeded Friday night's debut, storm clouds of a different sort gathered over Shakespeare Hill, raining down a torrent of rage, jealousy and downright fiendishness.
"Othello," having only been staged once before in the long history of the company, requires a perfect confluence of forces.
The title role, more than any other, requires a deeply commanding presence. The unconscionably villainous Iago must be portrayed by a master of duplicity. In this well-paced and moving production, director Saul Elkin has found that confluence in an admirable cast that does justice to one of Shakespeare's most heartbreaking and violent tragedies.
Elkin's out-of-town talent search for the title role yielded New York City-based Jolie Garrett, a capable and forceful actor whose first crack at the legendary Moor was brimming with pathos. Garret's booming voice and commanding presence contained all the furious anger and righteous jealousy that the role demands, though his light-speed and sometimes overeager delivery occasionally obscures some of his better lines.
It has long been said that "Othello" belongs to the character of Iago above all, and the serpentine Tim Newell did nothing to dispel that notion. Shakespeare gave this archvillain most of the juicy lines, and Newell's carefully nuanced and often playful Iago serves as the ever-charging engine behind the briskly paced production.
Newell employs all manner of subtle comic devices and shines brightly in his exchanges with the ineffectual Roderigo (played by Peter Meachum, whose comically effective lips add needed levity to the show), whom he manipulates with great ease. When he speaks with Othello, Newell's eyes dart back and forth with a sort of half-guilty, half-evil light behind them.
This is especially effective in one of several back-and-forths between Iago and Othello in which they discuss the honesty of Othello's innocent wife, Desdemona. "Long live she so! And long live you to think so!" Iago says and then casts a subtly guilty eye toward the audience … almost to the point of hamming it up but stopping just short.
Chirs Critelli, as Othello's noble lieutenant Cassio, delivers a flawless and moving performance, as does Rebecca Elkin, whose Desdemona is alternately soft-spoken and hysterical and falls perfectly between Jolie's power and Newell's duplicity.
Donna Massimo's costumes are universally gorgeous, from Desdemona's shimmering gowns to her Roman-inspired soldier uniforms.
As Iago says, the play is well-tuned at the start, but it's wonderfully captivating to watch as he "sets down the pegs" to produce a powerful sort of discord.
Shakespeare in the Park: An Edwardian woman gets her man
The women of Shakespeare are often notoriously strong, dagger-tongued personalities adept at outsmarting their male counterparts.
In Shakespeare in Delaware Park’s production of “All’s Well That Ends Well,” director Derek Campbell has focused on the love-struck Helena (Kate LoConti), a character whose cunning, charm and penchant for manipulation finds echoes in famous women throughout literature and history.
Campbell has moved the setting for Shakespeare’s complex comedy from the Elizabethan era to the Edwardian, an approach that succeeds in making its modern feminist connotations more evident. One is almost immediately reminded of Princess Diana of Wales, who, like Helena, used her fierce intelligence and grace to woo an otherwise wayward and obstinate aristocrat.
In Helena’s case, that aristocrat is Count Bertram (played by newcomer Andy Moss), who is an unfortunate and stuck-up man trapped in mental adolescence. When the low-born Helena fails to catch his eye, she embarks on a devious and questionable scheme to force their marriage. He flees fast, and she follows faster, intent on reeling him in at any cost. In the course of her pursuit, Helena gains the trust of Bertram’s mother and plays many of the minor characters like a kid plays hopscotch.
The play is wonderfully acted. Robert Rutland, who plays the ailing King of France, shows his Shakespearean chops for the first time on the Delaware Park stage, and his fresh and dynamic performance makes us wonder what took him so long.
Lisa Ludwig shines as Count Bertram’s eminently mannered mother, whose transformation from serpent to dove is great fun to observe. As memorable comic characters go, Tom Loughlin takes the cake as Parolles, the blundering and unscrupulous soldier whose cowardice undoes him. Loughlin’s skill at physical comedy and deft timing — especially in an exchange with Helena on the subject of virginity — produce the heartiest laughs in the show.
But the gleaming diamond in this production is LoConti, whose forceful Helena contains an easy and modern irreverence imbued with irresistible grace. She makes Helena’s dubious plans — to trick Betram into marriage by stealing his ring and conceiving his child — seem almost honorable by employing a kind of revolutionary forthrightness that Campbell highlights.
Ken Shaw’s costumes, from this red-clad soldiers to the countess’ glimmering dresses, perfectly capture the aristocratic aplomb and haughtiness of the Edwardian period. Campbell’s eye and ear for modern humor is evident in too many spots to mention, but reaches its apex in a scene containing four eligible bachelors, each impeccably dressed in Shaw’s cricket-playing outfits. Each one assumes a dapper, nonchalant stance as they are turned down, one after the other, by the coolhearted Helena.
Lighting designer Brian Cavanagh also deserves credit for creating an enchanting effect of moonlight in an outdoor scene that came just after dusk.
As Campbell suggests in the playbill, there is something bubbling under this play, a “dark, troubled interior” that belies its supposedly comic nature. The play has so many questions and facets to explore that a lesser production might have confused them by focusing on too many at once. By casting “All’s Well” as Shakespeare’s closest approximation of feminism, the play transcends comedy and becomes something much deeper.
‘All’s Well’ as Shakespeare season opens When Jolie Garrett walked into a casting room in New York City in April, Shakespeare in Delaware Park’s Saul Elkin knew he was “the one.”
Garrett performed a monologue from the first act of “Othello” using the room’s baby grand piano and floor-to-ceiling mirror to accentuate his performance. As Garrett performed the scene, a plea the Moor Othello makes to justify his love for the white Desdemona, Elkin and festival Managing Director Lisa Ludwig were taken aback.
“She loved me for the dangers I had pass’d,/ And I loved her that she did pity them,” Garrett said, nearing the end of the famous speech. “This only is the witchcraft I have used:/ Here comes the lady; let her witness it.”
“We just pulled back in our chairs and thought, ‘God, will this guy ever accept the role?’” said Elkin, the executive and artistic director of the festival.
Luckily for them, Ludwig said, he accepted immediately.
“To me, it’s very ‘Matrix,’ very Keanu Reeves,” said Garrett, a New York-based actor who beat out a field of 30 competitors for the lead role in “Othello,” the second production of the Shakespeare festival’s 33rd season set to debut on July 26. Opening the season will be “All’s Well That Ends Well,” starting at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
“I have not played Othello, but I have been working on the character for 10 years, adding layer upon layer upon layer, and they saw that when I walked into the room,” Garrett said. “It cannot be mistaken.”
Even over the phone, Garrett’s sentences are measured, carefully considered and often grandiose, recalling the dignity and presence of Laurence Fishburne (who played Othello opposite Kenneth Branagh’s villainous Iago in a 1995 film). The man might as well converse in iambic pentameter. Having appeared in Shakespeare productions in New York and around the country, Garrett is finally ready to set his decade-in-the making creation on its feet.
Considered one of Shakespeare’s best and most memorable tragic characters, Othello demands an actor of commanding presence who embodies the necessary combination of blind trust and ruinous jealousy that sits at the heart of the play.
Elkin, the festival’s executive and artistic director since its inception in 1976, has only staged Othello once, in 1991.
With the title role secured, Elkin looked to the brimming Buffalo theater community to fill the role of the evil and duplicitous Iago, who will be played by veteran Tim Newell. With perennial festival leading man Paul Todaro spending a summer in Pittsburgh, Newell expressed delight at the opportunity in his Artie Award acceptance speech in early June, in which he jokingly thanked Todaro for skipping town so he could play the juicy role.
But for all the familiar faces that will grace the festival’s outdoor stage, a sizable contingent of newcomers, both young and old, are taking cracks at some venerable roles.
The first production, Shakespeare’s comedy “All’s Well That Ends Well,” will star, among others, Shakespeare in the Park newcomers Robert Rutland (seen often at Studio Arena Theatre) as the King, and the 22-year-old Andy Moss as the arrogant young Bertram, a character he says embodies a kind of “preteen angst.”
Moss, a recent graduate of the University at Buffalo’s musical theater program, is excited at the transition from the classroom to the stage, where some of his former teachers will become his peers.
“I think all the stuff I learned from them was great, but I’m learning more being onstage with them than I ever did in class,” Moss said. “You learn to take all that education you have and make it into something that’s a true technique.”
The debut of “All’s Well That Ends Well” on Thursday marks the long-awaited return of director Derek Campbell to the Delaware Park stage. His last stint as a director in Delaware Park was 1984’s “Measure for Measure.”
“Derek coming back is tremendous,” Moss said, noting that he had not yet been born the last time Campbell directed a Shakespeare in Delaware Park production.
Because most of Buffalo’s theaters take a break for the summer, Moss added that Shakespeare in Delaware Park provides an opportunity for different segments of the theater community to merge.
For Elkin, the oft-cited universal nature of Shakespeare’s work is motivation to stay faithful to the Bard’s scripts, while past productions he’s directed have sometimes taken a more radical approach. “I no longer feel now that I have to force relevance,” Elkin said. “The plays sort of speak for themselves.”
As for “All’s Well That Ends Well,” Campbell is moving the comedy up several centuries to the Edwardian period (about 1901-1919), and some of the rehearsal techniques might seem a little unorthodox. Costume designer Ken Shaw, for instance, hosted actors at his house to watch episodes of the British reality show “Manor House,” which is set in Edwardian Britain, to get an idea of the characters’ dress and movements.
Whatever the interpretations or directorial approaches, Elkin said that the impact of the summer event — which reaches 50,000 people each summer — is undeniable.
“There is a moment, when the sun goes down, it starts to get dark and the stage lights take over, the sounds of the city diminish, and audiences stop fidgeting,” Elkin said. “It really is very magical.”
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