Shakespeare and Company provides audiences with a deeper understanding of “The Comedy of Errors”
By: Kevin Conley II
Staff Writer
Shakespeare and Company brought laughs and entertainment to Hudson Valley Community College’s Maureen Stapleton Theater after reenacting two of William Shakespeare’s most famous plays.
Shakespeare and Company performed “Macbeth” on Feb. 18, and “The Comedy of Errors” on Thursday, Feb. 20.
“The Comedy of Errors” marked Shakepeare and Company’s 11th year of their week-long residency at Hudson Valley Community College. It is William Shakespeare’s shortest play, and is also considered one of his most nonsensical, consisting of slapsticks, mistaken comedy, puns and word play.
“The Comedy of Errors” is about a family dealing with mistaken identity that involves two identical twins who were separated by birth. This causes Antipholus, the ruler of Syracuse, and his servant, Dromio of Syracuse, to be sent out to search for them in Ephesus.
The cast of the play would reenact the lines written in Shakespeare’s manuscript of the play as well as interact with the crowd. “The Comedy of Errors” also used modern music to provide entertainment and relatability to the audience.
Shakespeare and Company was formed in the 1970s by Kristen Linklater, a world-renowned voice teacher, and Tina Packer, an English film actor during the 1970s.
According to the play’s narrator, Linklater and Packer began Shakespeare and Company in America because they weren’t satisfied with English Shakespearean performances, and wanted to create a deeper connection with the text.
Shakespeare and Company’s biggest achievements in reenacting the “The Comedy of Errors” was their way of entertaining audiences.
“We try to just take the text that Shakespeare wrote, and interpret it in the way that’s kinda the most ‘juicy’ for us that really involves the audiences as well, and brings it into the audiences’ understanding,” the cast said.
They explained how the audiences’ involvement, combined with Shakespeare’s written lines and modern effects like music, background and production design, kept audiences entertained.
The company’s motivation for reenacting plays is also traditional. Most actors said that their purpose of working for Shakespeare and Company was to share their performances to the students, staff and guests, as well as to find a way to share their passions for acting through Shakespeare’s creations.
“We started the company to ask the basic questions of humanity like ‘what must I do?’, ‘what does it mean to be alive?’ and ‘where is my place?’” The cast members said.
The cast members wanted to not only discover acting through art and entertain audiences through Shakespeare’s poems in an innovative way, but they also wanted to find the truth about the humanity they have inside of them.
“The Comedy of Errors” tried to reach audiences by helping them understand human confusion with identity– like how people don’t recognize the way they feel, and how they should be careful with which people in the play they should trust.
Most of the actors in the reenactment of “The Comedy of Errors” had about ten years of touring experience before becoming the main cast of the play.
“The Comedy of Errors” was simply a glimpse of Shakespeare and Company’s theatrical prowess, and it demonstrated their creative genius. Combining comedy of the past with elements of today helped the audience understand Shakespeare’s story.