'All's Well That Ends Well': NDSF's Touring Company returns to South Bend area after three-year hiatus
SOUTH BEND ― The Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival took 2019 off in what it then called a "pause" so that it could engage in long-range planning and prepare for its 20th anniversary season celebration in 2020.
The pandemic, of course, disrupted those plans, and NDSF canceled its Professional and Touring company productions for 2020. The Professional Company returned last year with "A Midsummer Night's Dream," but The Touring Company remained idle for the third year in a row.
Now, "All's Well That Ends Well" for The Touring Company as it continues its summer tour of ― for the most part ― area parks with Shakespeare's comedy about the charismatic Helena trying to find her path in life while also chasing her love, Bertram, who is indifferent to her.
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“Part of why I picked … 'All’s Well,' in particular, was because it was one of the plays in which Shakespeare’s company came back after a period in which the playhouses were closed because of the plague,” Ryan Family Producing Artistic Director Grant Mudge said. "… Their mission is to enrich our surrounding communities, academically, socially and technically."
Important scenes in the play, he said, depict characters facing frustrations that connect it to the present day.
“There’s a key moment where a crucial character faces a similar frustration and is isolated in, essentially, a shutdown and emerges," Mudge said about a scene in "Romeo and Juliet," The Professional Company's play this year. "I think it's something that audiences will have a new understanding about.”
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The company
In addition to producing their own play, members of The Touring Company take classes on voice, text and movement and serve as cast and crew members for NDSF’s Professional Company production, which, this year, is "Romeo and Juliet."
Previously, The Touring Company consisted of current college students and recent graduates, whereas this year introduces a new element born of the pause year's discussions: three local professional actors in the company's cast of 11.
"Now that we're able to bring it back," Mudge said, "this seemed like the perfect opportunity for incorporating local pros, which we've always done in The Professional Company but for the first time on tour. … I'm really grateful. They're a tremendous presence. Both shows are about well-meaning generativity, so having the separation of generations has been helpful."
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Their work with The Professional Company also provides the younger actors who may be contemplating a career in theater with the opportunity to talk with the professional actors about the production but also about practical concerns such as how to get an agent or whether an agent is necessary.
Tiana Mudzimurema, who plays Diana in "All's Well That Ends Well," got her start with Shakespeare with the Robinson Shakespeare Company at Robinson Community Learning Center in South Bend. Now a student at Northeastern University, she appreciates the ability to study professional techniques.
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“I’m a big observer, so the best thing for me to do is to see how they interact with people and how they interact with themselves,” Mudzimurema says. “One of my favorite things is to watch the leads and how they prepare themselves before they go onstage, what they do during breaks, how they give their body rest and how they bring themselves into the characters.”
The play
Shakespeare wrote "All's Well That Ends Well" between 1598 and 1608. Although classified as a comedy, it's also considered one of Shakespeare's "problem plays" because Helena and Diana switch places so that the former can have sex with Bertram without his knowledge of the deception.
“The story is full of humanity that, I think, transcends time,” director and composer Scotty Arnold said. “The language is 400 years old, and, luckily, we have some amazing actors, both students and professionals, who are so great at finding exactly what that language is saying and cutting through those centuries.”
Part of the creative process has been to add music, making dramatic moments heavier.
“A great gift from Scotty … is how well he has used Shakespeare’s own words, chosen which moments might benefit from expanding on the character in song, and also used some of his own language and a bit of French cultural music to flesh out the play,” Mudge said.
The music, he said, is contemporary, mixing musical theater with doo-wop.
“My process in that has been to see what emotional moments in this story could be enhanced or deepened by the use of music, which, I think, has such an ability to cut to the hearts of the audience,” Arnold said.
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He also condensed the script, which is standard with Shakespearean productions.
“I think for 'All’s Well,' the basic assignment is to create a family-friendly touring production that clocks in at under 90 minutes, and that’s an assignment within itself,” Arnold said. “Within that, the thing I have been excited about is to enhance the richness and the complexity of the story and make sure that we’re not shying away from anything in the story.”
Cutting a secondary plot and focusing on central themes was necessary to match the story to the resources at hand: 11 actors outdoors.
Although outdoor performances face weather-related challenges, Mudge said that Shakespeare was written to be performed outside. Outdoor spaces have a different atmosphere than indoor venues, he said, that make the audience more relaxed than when in a theater.
“The great fun of being outdoors is the surprises that happen," Mudge said, "and being able to see the audience. … Often in theaters, lights go out on the audience and we don’t have as much opportunity to see those facial expressions and engage with audience members.”
Onstage
• What: The Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival's Touring Company presents “All's Well That Ends Well”
• Schedule:
7 p.m. July 21: Goshen Theater, 216 S. Main St., Goshen
7 p.m. July 22: Central Park, 200 E. Mishawaka Ave., Mishawaka
7 p.m. July 23: Elkhart Public Library, 300 S. 2nd St., Elkhart
7 p.m. July 28: Fernwood Botanical Gardens, 13988 Range Line Road, Niles
7 p.m. July 29: Krasl Art Center, 707 Lake Blvd., St. Joseph
7 p.m. July 30: Potawatomi Park, 500 S. Greenlawn Ave., South Bend
7 p.m. Aug. 5: Wellfield Botanical Gardens, 1011 N. Main St., Elkhart
6:30 p.m. Aug. 6: Dewey Cannon Park, downtown Three Oaks
6:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 22: Main Quad, Notre Dame
• Cost: Free
• For more information: Visit shakespeare.nd.edu or email shakes@nd.edu.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame Shakespeare's Touring Company returns to area parks
