Unrehearsed Shakespeare: Plays coming to North Park, Hartwood Acres

Classic plays of William Shakespeare will be performed this summer using possibly a more historically correct acting technique, beginning with “Much Ado About Nothing” at 7 p.m. June 21 on the Boathouse Lawn in North Park.

Unrehearsed Shakespeare Project performances are being presented free by the New Renaissance Theatre Company, based in Pittsburgh, using the unrehearsed cue script technique. A single cast of actors are following the script and using cues and clues written into the text by the playwright for their performances, said Andy Kirtland, the company’s artistic director.

“We call the unrehearsed cue script technique a historically informed practice as opposed to original practice because the truth is, we don’t know. There are very few records, and anyone who says, ‘this is the way’ should be taken with a grain of salt,” said Kirtland, who co-founded The Unrehearsed Shakespeare Project in 2014 and The New Renaissance Theatre Company in 2016.

Every performance is unique, with the plays performed in rep with a single cast, and each cast member has at least two tracks of characters he or she will perform for each play. This means that over 14 performances, the cast will never be exactly the same. Some actors will interpret the roles differently, though still taking everything from the text, Kirtland said.

“Each performance and venue will have its own distractions. You could attend every performance and never see the same play twice,” he said.

Kirtland learned the unrehearsed cue script technique in 2002 as an intern with the New England Shakespeare Festival, and he has worked on and developed the technique ever since.

“The approach to the text and the performance is definitely more in line with how a play would have been produced in Shakespeare’s time. But is it 100% accurate? No. Even if we could create a perfect reproduction of a performance, we wouldn’t, because we don’t have an Elizabethan audience. It wouldn’t land,” he said.

Kirtland is referencing the period beginning in the late 1500s, when Shakespeare’s company performed in open air, under natural light, in an environment full of distractions such as gambling and drinking. As such, the performances had to be entertaining and fast-paced to keep the audience interested.

The same play was not repeated every day, and there wasn’t time for rehearsing, according to Kirtland.

There were no copyright laws, and it was too difficult and expensive for Shakespeare to copy multiple scripts longhand. Actors were only given scrolls, or rolls, the origin of an actor’s role, that contained the last few words of their cues, their own lines, entrances, exits and only essential stage directions that could not be conveyed through the lines of the other actors, according to a description on the New Renaissance Theatre’s website.

So the plays are as close as possible to how Shakespeare’s company would have performed, Kirtland said.

“They are immediate. They are fast-paced. They acknowledge the audience in a way that modern theater does not,” he said.

Other performances include “Twelfth Night” at 5 p.m. June 30 on the Hartwood Acres Mansion Lawn, 200 Hartwood Acres Drive, and at 7 p.m. July 12, at the North Park Boathouse Lawn.

“Much Ado About Nothing” will be performed at Hartwood Acres Mansion Lawn at 5 p.m. July 14.

“‘Twelfth Night’ is just a fun play. It is confusing in the best possible ways, and Malvolio is so much fun to watch and play,” Kirtland said.

Theater company members Adam Rutledge and Joanna Getting are directing and performing this season, and actress Tonya Lynn will be in both plays.

The rest of the cast members are all local Pittsburgh talent, some veterans and some making their unrehearsed debuts, said Kirtland, who has performed and directed with theater companies in the Pittsburgh area and beyond. He has a degree in theater from Dickinson College in Carlisle and studied with the British American Drama Academy in London.

A list of other New Renaissance Theatre Company performances can be found at www.newrentheatre.com.