This Valley is filled with a tremendous amount of artistically talented people and we enjoy sharing their stories here in KRL--whether they are artists, musicians, actors, writers, or directors. This week we are featuring local actress and costumer Brook Aiello.
Since 1997, I’ve had this love affair going on with the works of Molière. Starting with Tartuffe, I began writing new English variations of his plays in rhymed iambic pentameter. Re-writing The Miser, The Doctor in Spite of Himself, The Imaginary Invalid, The Misanthrope, and about a dozen others, I seemed to have found my niche in life…writing and, eventually, performing Molière’s plays, often playing the roles that he himself played 350 years ago. It was a short leap from there to creating my first one-man show, Molière than Thou. I’ve been touring Molière than Thou since the Fall of 2002.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) (Revised) at the Woodward Shakespeare Festival is…
Wait a minute! Didn’t you review that show two weeks ago?
Yes, I did, but that was with a different cast.
Can you imagine seeing all of William Shakespeare’s 37 plays in one night…in less than two hours? The Woodward Shakespeare Festival makes a fine go of it with its final production of the festival’s 11th season, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) (Revised), which was developed by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield in 1987. The Revised part updated some of the jokes to bring the humor into the 21st century.
For a director, the best thing about Shakespeare is that he’s dead, and he can’t complain about how his script is interpreted. It gives a production freedom to interpret the text in any number of ways. In the Fourth Wall Theatre Company’s Hamlet, at Visalia’s Main Street Theatre until August 16, that interpretation is modern and sleek, with hide-a-beds and headphones.
Kayla Weber’s set on The Festival Stage in Woodward Park looks like the metaphorical attic of the Woodward Shakespeare Festival, littered with bits and pieces of past productions: toppled columns from Julius Caesar, plywood trees, chunks of Macbeth, ironwork from A Streetcar Named Desire. The black set is embellished with rows of gold-stenciled designs, and a red band of paint next to the stage floor looks like dried blood that has seeped from behind the scenery. This is the world of the Greg Taber and Broderic Beard directed production of Richard III the WSF is presenting through July 11.
For eleven years, this group has managed to bring free theatre to the public. They’ve battled weather, the park, and the ultimate artistic challenge - Shakespeare. Through three separate performance spaces, they have put on 24 main-stage productions, and are about to open three more.
Currently on stage at COS in Visalia is a show called The Henriad. This is a unique show, adapted from Shakespeare’s Richard II, Henry IV (Parts 1 & 2), and Henry V. The show is presented by their student run production company, the Experimental Theatre Ensemble. The show was adapted and is directed by Chris Mangels.
The Tempest is one of Shakespeare’s last major plays, and one of my favorites (I have some vague childhood memories of the 1960 TV version with Maurice Evans, Richard Burton, Lee Remick, Roddy McDowall, and Tom Poston—my first introduction to the works of William Shakespeare). This is the final production of the Woodward Shakespeare Festival’s tenth season.
Two sets of separated twins, a death sentence, a gold chain, cross-dressing, mistaken identities, a seductive courtesan, a duke, and a mysterious Abbess. It smells like Shakespeare.
