Presents:
Much Ado About Nothing
Sunday, August 10 at 8:00 p.m.
At Hyde Playground
90 Lincoln Street
Newton Highlands
Commonwealth Shakespeare Company‘s 2014 Apprentice Company consists of 24 pre-professional actors from across the country studying in residence at Wellesley, MA. Join them for this summer’s showcase production of William Shakespeare’s beloved romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing. Directed by Clay Hopper, Much Ado follows the triumphs and struggles along the road to love. Beatrice and Benedict, two self-proclaimed singles “too wise to woo” are tricked into courtship by their mischief making friends despite their own better judgments and sharp-witted tongues. Meanwhile, a jealous plot of mistaken identity threatens to pull apart the love-struck Hero and Claudio. A whirlwind of potential heartache and great humor ensues as the residents of Messina rally around the young lovers to put all the pieces back together.
We are expecting excellent weather for tonight’s performance!
We are going to do our best to get back from a previous engagement in time for this performance. It gives me a chance to make a comment about John Rice who can add 2 Shakespeare performances to his list of many accomplishments for Newton Highlands.
I’m writing this because there were complaints about the decision last June to hold most of the Highlands Village Day activities at Hyde Field instead of in the Village Square where all previous Village Days had taken place. The result was that we had two very separate locations where activities were going on. Most outside vendors and most of the people went to the Hyde Field while the Highlands merchants drew a much smaller crowd. There was a big vacuum in the middle. There were complaints about this at the time from some merchants and people attending our Village Day.
I meant to comment on this at the time because John’s names got factored into some of the complaints.
Here’s the full story. At past Village Days, we had a company that used to set up different rides for the kids in the Highlands Parking Lot and they did it free of charge. This year, they told John that they simply couldn’t afford to keep doing it for nothing and would have to charge around $4,000 to set it up. We just didn’t have that kind of money. This hit very late in the planning for Village Day, and didn’t give John much chance to adjust for it.
But John was able to find an owner of a “Bouncy House” that we could rent for around $1,500.00. This was doable, but there was one catch. You can’t put a Bouncy House which is in effect a giant balloon, on any kind of pavement. You need grass. There’s no grass in the Village Square and that’s when John reluctantly advised our Area Council that we had to move the bulk of Village Day to Hyde Playground. His reasoning was clear to all of us who have been involved in past Village Day activities. If you can’t hold the kids with entertaining things like rides or a bouncy house, the parents who comprise the bulk of participants, won’t be able to stay and participate in things like our merchant driven Silent Auction.
This is what John was faced with and the Area Council unanimously backed his decision to relocate to the Hyde Playground. We are already starting advance planning for next year’s Village Day where we hope to find some way to link the needs of the Highlands Merchants with the need to accommodate kids and parents and other participants at this great annual event. John will help us work our way through this as he has helped us work our way through so many other things in the Highlands.
The morale of the story: There can be no successful Village Day without satisfied Highlands merchants and a Bouncy House.
If this off the original script, or the modern School Committee Much Ado script?
Bob – thanks for the history of the decision. I’d like to suggest that it might work well to put the Bouncy House & kids’ activities at the playground and all the rest of the outside merchants back on Lincoln St. where they used to be. After all, the outside merchants weren’t all clustered on the parking lot either.