The Milwaukee-based Summit Playerswill once again bring Shakespeare to Wisconsin's state parks. It’s always an adventure to perform in a new space for any actor, but being outdoors adds its own unique sets of challenges.
One of the biggest challenges the Summit Players face is ensuring their voices are heard during the show. Actor A.J. Magoon shares his past experience competing with Polish Fest that happened to be going on right next door:
“A lot of the time when you get to a point where you know you can’t compete in volume, you start trying to compete in diction. You know, just making sure that every single vowel and consonant comes out,” he explains.
Hannah Klapperich-Mueller, executive director and actor for Summit Players, says the audience also plays a hand in the sounds of the show. “The audience actually has a responsibility when they come to our shows because we make the audience our sound-effects. So, it’s also their job to make sure they’re participating enough that they’re telling the story with us.”
This summer, the troupe will put on A Comedy of Errors. Klapperich-Mueller has no doubt that its relevance continues 400 years later. “The way that we’re doing it this year is very silly, very fun. It’s also a story about immigrants, it’s about falling in love and being confused by that, it’s about people trying to make their livelihood. So it’s a lot of human things that people are still trying to puzzle out today,” she says.
The Summit Players will be performing insixteen state parksaround Wisconsin this summer, kicking the tour off on June 17th at the Richard Bong Recreation Area.
