Rehearsed segment calls

9 am Wednesday morning:

All for CURTAIN SKETCH

Method refresher: scenes from Twelfth Night 

1:30 pm Wednesday afternoon:

Rehearsed segments acts 1-3

Curtain sketch

9 am Thursday morning:

Curtain sketch

Rehearsed segments acts 4 and 5

1:30 pm - 2:15 pm Thursday afternoon:

All rehearsed segments

2:30 pm - 5:00 pm Thursday afternoon

Curtain call.

Act 5

Curtain Sketch.

10 am Friday morning:

Curtain sketch, all rehearsed segments.

Act 5 through curtain call.

Performance calls 6 pm Fri/Sat/Mon, 2:30 pm Sun

Performance calls in Silverton 4:30 Tues/Wed

HOSTS

Wright Green Room: Emery and Kat

Ames Risch: Elijah

Jay and Jackie Lauderdale: Jake and Skylar

(Local: John, Nate, Colin, and Elizabeth)

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath…

Director’s Note:

Each play No Holds Bard has performed, from Measure for Measure in 2005 to As You Like it in 2024, we've chosen because we simply could not imagine how it would work, what that play would have been like in its original performance conditions - and we were so utterly curious to find out, along with you, our audience. 

This one, The Merchant of Venice, well, it’s no exception. We first performed it two decades ago, when we were based in Denver, and we brought it here on tour to Fellin and Hartwell Parks. We return to it because of how much we still find ourselves discovering about the way Shakespeare holds “a mirror up to [human] nature” in this comedy, where the obstacle to three marriages is the famous Shylock, a Jewish moneylender who insists on his “pound of flesh.”

The scheming, evil Jew is a vicious anti-semitic trope in Shakespeare’s time (and throughout history). I think of Christopher Marlowe’s Barabas from The Jew of Malta and Fagan from Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Especially now, as conspiracy theories mushroom and hate crimes proliferate, the last thing our company would want to do is to abet that sentiment.

But Shakespeare does something different with Shylock, which is why we keep wanting to hear from him (and have put Barabas behind us!). He’s not a pleasant man, by any means, but the circumstances of the play put an extraordinary pressure on him. A Christian would respond identically, he argues:  

If you prick us, doe we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison vs doe we not die? and if you wrong us shall we not revenge? if we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. 

Shakespeare’s Shylock argues eloquently, throughout the play, for his own humanity, an argument that resonates especially these days, when our world struggles so viscerally to recognize the humanity of the “Other” in society.

You might remember our 2023 production of Othello, another play about the “Other” in Venice. Iago orchestrates a tragedy through his own pure malignancy, magnifying his society’s racism and misogyny to serve his selfish ends. It’s a bleak vision.

In this play, by contrast, Portia saves the day. She and Nerissa run rings around the men who like to think they’re running the world so brilliantly, men whose only solutions to problems are commerce and bloodshed. She takes the side of mercy, of forgiveness, of love, finally. That’s what this play is really about, and what we need more of in our world: the hope that love can prevail in dark times.

It’s not simple. Shylock’s punishment is not kind; Shakespeare’s mirror reflects the persistence of our worst impulses. No easy answers. But there’s a joy beneath it all. As Portia says:

That light we see is burning in my hall:

How far that little candle throws his beams,

So shines a good deed in a naughty world. (5.1)

May this No Holds Bard candle throw its beams far in our naughty world!

John Kissingford