Driving through the rolling, fall-foliaged hills of beautiful southwestern Virginia last weekend, I came across the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. A great little theater in a great little town, this place is dedicated to staging Shakespeare’s plays in a replica (the only replica, apparently) of the famous Blackfriars Theater, a singular indoor theater popular in Shakespeare’s day. Dedicated to the idea of presenting no-frills, authentic, let-the-language-stand-on-its-own type productions, they seem to be getting it right. From their flyer, graciously handed to me by the pleasant and knowledgeable girl managing the box office door:
“The idea was simple: we thought that if we could re-create some of the staging conditions for which Shakespeare wrote, then we might be able to recover some of the magic written into his plays that can get lost when you play with all the technological tricks we’ve invented over the last four hundred years.”Seems reasonable to me. Although I was unable to attend that day’s production (All’s Well That Ends Well), I will be back for a later production, perhaps Timon of Athens in the spring?
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