Yesterday the Newton Nomadic Theater hosted perhaps our most eccentric production in our nine years of existence.  We called it the Hidden Shakespeare Theater – “one part scavenger hunt, one part outdoor hike, and three parts Juliet”

Guests were kept totally in the dark about where the performances would take place.   Yesterday morning all ticket holders received an email sending them to the Showcase Cinema on Rt 9 (The Street) where they were told that they would receive a clue.  Follow the clues, find the theater, and see the show.

The clues led them across the parking lot, into the Hammond Pond Woods, down serpentine paths through to the T tracks on the far side of the woods at the Chicken Farm Truck Pad, across the tracks and into Houghton Gardens, through the gardens and out the other side, across a street and into a backyard of a house there – just over a mile long walk.

For the first show, around the time we expected the entire audience to have arrived at the theater, only about 25% were there.  We then received a few phone calls from audience members lost in the Hammond Pond Woods.  We sent a search crew and 10 minutes later located the rest of our audience and ushered them for the final leg of the journey.   For the second show, we tweaked the clues and signs so the entire audience was able to find it on their own steam.

Once we found the missing audience the show began.  Romeo and Juliet and Juliet and Juliet is the work of Shakespeare for the Masses, a Marthas Vineyard troupe.  They’ve created dozens of truncated hour long versions of Shakespeare’s plays.  They call it Shakespeare for beginners.  The plays are performed script in hand with just a few rehearsals.  They feature the text of the original plays with a narrator who sets each scene with cheeky funny introductions.  In this version, Romeo is played by one actor and Juliet is played by four different actors – three women and a man i.e. there’s a bit of Juliet in all of us.  Each of the actors play multiple roles throughout, putting on and taking off sashes with the name of their character.  The whole proceeding had a madcap and funny vibe and the audience appeared to enjoy it immensely.

One of the most fun moments of the show was during the introductions, when we thanked the homeowners who had lent us their yard for the performances.  It was only at that moment that the audience learned that they were sitting in the yard of Mayor Ruthanne Fuller and her husband Joe.  The mayor was there for the second show and got to surprise the audience herself.

We are extremely grateful to the mayor and her husband for opening up their home for this oddball theatrical happening.  The mayor has always been a big supporter of the arts but this goes a bit above and beyond.

The ethos of Shakespeare for The Masses is that they try to bring Shakespeare to people who may not ever have seen any before.  In keeping with that mission they are committed to the performances always being free.  For us to pull this off in Newton it meant we needed sponsors to underwrite the production.   We were delighted that both Newton Community Pride and the Village Bank stepped in and said they would be delighted to sponsor this madness,

We were also tickled that this was the first time that a Shakespeare for the Masses production has ever made it off the Vineyard. 

Big thank you to out wonderful cast (Nicole Galland, Sara Morrisette, Abigail Dickson, Slava Tchoul, Matt Winberg, Lynda Johnson), our volunteers, and our intrepid audience who took it in remarkably good spirits that we stranded them in the woods for a while.