Daisey Bower and Thomas Perkins act out a scene in ‘Shakespeare in Love.’
Actors from 'Shakespeare in Love' rehearse Wednesday at Centralia College.
Daisey Bower and Thomas Perkins act out a scene in ‘Shakespeare in Love.’
The play ‘Shakespeare in Love’ isn’t just a story about one of the most famous writers in history falling in love. It’s also about chaos in theater production and how everything comes together at the last minute, seemingly against all odds.
“There is so much joy in this play that it’s really a pleasure to watch, I think, and just to experience,” said Emmy Kreilkamp, assistant professor of theater and drama at Centralia College. “It is funny, of course, but it’s also just about a group of ragtag individuals that have a hope and a dream — and they see that through to fruition.”
This weekend, ‘Shakespeare in Love’ will come to the Wickstrom Studio Theatre in Washington Hall at Centralia College. The story centers around a young William Shakespeare early in his career.
“It’s at a point in his life when he is sort of a struggling artist and he is having massive writer’s block,” said Thomas Perkins, who plays William Shakespeare and is a Centralia College alumnus. “He has his friend, Christopher Marlowe, to kind of help him along the way not only in his writing, but in his love life. So he becomes like the almost hopeless romantic and he becomes a very romantic-driven character — he starts writing ‘Romeo and Juliet.’”
Daisy Bower, who plays the female lead, Viola De Lesseps, is currently a student at Centralia College.
“Viola is really — she loves Will almost as much as she loves Will’s poetry,” Bower said. “She sets up the whole story for ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ Everything that happens between us inspires him to write ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and I think Viola has a bit of every other female character he has ever written past that. Every bit of her energy, and emotions, and just her attitude can be shown through other characters that he writes.”
The movie “Shakespeare in Love” was released in 1998 and was written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. Then in 2014, the screenplay was adapted for the stage by Lee Hall. It made its North American debut at the Stratford Festival in Ontario and was later produced by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
“Some of the costume pieces we are using in the show are from the original production of Oregon Shakespeare Festival,” Kreilkamp said. “Our costume designer used to work at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and so she kind of had some ideas about, obviously, what they had in their stock we could use. So we were able to rent some pieces.”
Each year, Kreilkamp tries to bring an assortment of genres to the Centralia College stage. Last fall, it was the Greek tragedy “Antigone.” For the spring, Kreilkamp selected “West Side Story.”
“It’s important to me to have both a combination of drama, comedies and musicals each year,” Kreilkamp said. “But I also want to provide opportunities for actors to explore different genres, different time periods. … So that left the need for a light comedy or something fun to kind of balance off the other pieces.”
Kreilkamp said that while Centralia College gives preference to students during auditions, there are other roles that require people of different ages.
David Locklin, for example, is 13 and plays John Webster — a disagreeable young boy with a cockney accent.
“John Webster is this person that kind of reminds you of that weird friend you had in kindergarten who would like to feed mice (to other animals) and blood,” Locklin said. “That’s pretty much who that character is in ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ and the character that Will tries to avoid all the time.”
The characters have different English accents in the play, which range from cockney to some that are a bit more posh. Rehearsals typically begin six to eight weeks before the curtains open. For “Shakespeare in Love,” however, work began at the beginning of December so students could receive their scripts before winter break. The first week everyone focused solely on dialect work.
“It’s set in Elizabethan England,” Kreilkamp said. “So people needed to have coaching in how to do the accent. … I have a dialect coach whose area of specialty is accents. He also teaches Intermediate Acting. ... He did our dialect coaching for ‘Cabaret’ last year, when the majority of the cast needed a German accent. It worked out so well that we just decided to ask him to come back, so he will also be coaching the dialect work in ‘West Side Story.’”
The play premieres this weekend. Showtimes are 7 p.m. on Feb. 15-16 and 21-23, as well as 2 p.m. on Feb. 17 and 24 in the Wickstrom Studio Theatre in Washington Hall 150 at Centralia College. Tickets are $12 for adults and $10 for students and seniors. They can be purchased at the door, by calling 360-623-8871, or online at https://app.arts-people.com/index.php?ticketing=ccwa.
