Mount Royal College’s Shakespeare in the Park is back this summer for its 21st season. The Tempest and The Merry Wives of Windsor are the two main productions that will grace Prince’s Island Park this year. A noon-hour show, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), has also been added to the lineup for the month of August only.
Martin Fishman, artistic director of Shakespeare in the Park, is framing The Tempest in an aboriginal context. “You’ll have the power, the beauty, the magic of Shakespeare and, in the backdrop, the magic, power and beauty of aboriginal culture,” says Fishman. “You’ve got the best of both cultures onstage at the same time.”
The Tempest, Shakespeare’s last play, tells the story of Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, who takes over an island and enslaves its inhabitants. “Prospero colonizes the island, just the way the Europeans came and colonized our aboriginal people, and attempted to take away all of their culture, attempted to make them exactly as we were, instead of celebrating the differences,” says Fishman. “In the play, I just substitute the inhabitants of the island as aboriginals.”
Telly James, a graduate of Mount Royal College’s theatre arts program, takes on the role of Caliban, Prospero’s slave. “When I started, I didn’t want to be considered an aboriginal actor, just an actor. I want to go the mainstream path,” says James, noting that his role in this production will be his first as an aboriginal character.
Spirits inhabit the island in The Tempest, giving the play an aura of magic. In this production, aboriginal dancers and drummers will create that sense of magic. “What you hear about native people in the media is generally negative, and what I’m trying to do is change that. I hope minorities in general will step up, because I feel theatre in Calgary, or Western Canada, especially in Alberta, is predominantly white. I’m hoping a lot of people will step up so we can be this multicultural people that we seem to claim we are in Canada,” says James.
Fishman explains how, at the end of the play, Prospero apologizes to James’s character, Caliban. “While we were rehearsing it, Stephen Harper did the apology for the residential schools, and so you went, ‘Wow, the resonance is so extraordinary,’” says Fishman.
“It’s basically a story of revenge,” he adds. “But, the wonderful thing about the play is that Shakespeare makes us realize, and makes Prospero realize, that forgiveness is more important than revenge.”
The other show that will be staged this year is The Merry Wives of Windsor. “If Shakespeare ever wrote for TV, he’d write The Merry Wives,” laughs Fishman. “It’s a sitcom, it’s a farce. It’s not done very often, and I’m not quite sure why, because it’s so different than anything else he’s written.” Fishman sets the production in the 1950s, even opening it with the Happy Days theme.
The story tells the tale of Falstaff, portrayed as a biker, who comes to the town of Windsor. In order to make money, he decides to woo a couple of townswomen to get his hands on their monetary assets. “It’s a wonderful play for women, because they are so smart. They find out about it, they get together, and they seek revenge on the poor guy,” Fishman laughs. “The language itself is very prose. There’s very little poetry. To the human ear, even for those who don’t know Shakespeare, it’s fairly understandable right off the top.”
Making Shakespeare accessible is one of Fishman’s main goals. “A lot of people come to Shakespeare, and they’re a bit intimidated. I thought, ‘Let’s put it in a historical context, which at least gives them a level of comfort.’ So, there’s no doublet and hose in any of our production,” Fishman assures. “Once they relax, I have people coming out and saying, ‘I understand Shakespeare.’
“The beauty of Shakespeare, and its timelessness, which everyone talks about, is that it’s easily transportable to another era,” Fishman adds. “As long as you don’t jam another context upon it to make it work.”
