The Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival

Abstract

HEN details of the fourth season were announced this spring, it was immediately clear that Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival planners had confronted some difficult questions about the directions the festival could and should take in its future expansion. Throughout this season, an air of total professionalism has been everywhere apparent. An experienced general manager, Norman Israel, assumed many of the administrative responsibilities which, in the first three years, kept Executive Director Arthur Lithgow from concentrating on the festival's productions. This year, as Artistic Director, Lithgow not only directed three of the performances but also found time for some acting. For the first time this year, non-Shakespearian drama went into the repertory: a spirited, totally satisfying production of Sheridan's The Rivals, and a thematically unified double-bill on the varieties of courtship, Chekhov's The Marriage Proposal and Moliere's The School for Wives. Whether the festival planners were influenced by the increasing reliance on non-Shakespearian drama in Stratford, Ontario, is not clear; the enthusiasm with which the Sheridan and Chekhov-Moliere productions were received does, however, suggest that future festivals will build seasons around Shakespeare, rather than concentrating on his works exclusively. On its way to satisfactory resolution is the problem, which has beset the festival since its inception, of insufficient rehearsal time for a very ambitious schedule. Through a closer relationship between Princeton's McCarter Theater and the Lakewood festival, only three of this year's six productions were rehearsed entirely here. Macbeth (the opener) and the two non-Shakespearian programs were transferred from the McCarter's spring season; the other three productions (Henry VI, Coriolanus, and A Midsummer Night's Dream) were mounted here and polished for possible transfer to the McCarter's autumn repertory. While the sharing of production costs is a great asset, the most important gain is the increase in productive rehearsal time. The full season remains extraordinarily taxing for actors, but this year, for the first time, the cast seemed almost as fresh at season's end as at the beginning. If, in actual practice, this combination of production resources does not achieve its theoretical maximum effectiveness, it is only because of two practical problems: first, the two theaters differ greatly in their dimensions; second, it is now apparently impossible to hold together a repertory company, particularly in light of the abundant opportunities for actors with any extensive Shakespearian training and ex. perience. In consequence, recasting and restaging the imported productions still require perhaps too much valuable rehearsal time. In general, however,