With most outdoor venues shut this summer, The New York Times last month asked performers and directors to recall their experiences working among the elements. Our critic got nostalgic, too. Now it’s readers’ turn; an edited selection of their responses follows.
Tom Hanks was playing Falstaff in “Henry IV” outdoors in Los Angeles. In the opening moments, a drunk and reclining Falstaff had a bird land on his bloated stomach. During much laughter, Hanks didn’t have a clue what was happening as he couldn’t see the top of his belly. After the bird left and Hanks arose, a fellow cast member whispered to Falstaff what had occurred, and without missing a beat, Hanks improvised a couple of lines referring to the incident. Great fun! JIM LOPES, Los Angeles
Memory of a close call: I was onstage alone, playing Juliet in Columbus, Ohio, when a huge windstorm whipped up. The set included six to eight metal arches, 13 feet high, which were placed in rows on either side of me. When the wind took the first one, they all toppled like dominoes. Luckily, I was not killed. The director, who was inside a nearby building, avoiding the wind, was the only one with the authority to “call” the show for inclement weather. So after the audience stopped screaming, I continued, while hoisting the arches so that Juliet’s parents could make their entrances. The joys of outdoor theater in the Midwest! SUZANNE T. LAIRD, Westerville, Ohio
In August 2019, I visited Oahu, Hawaii for the first time. At a museum I saw a poster for a local amateur Shakespeare performance of “As You Like It,” outdoors that evening on the museum grounds. There were seats for only about 100 people, and a makeshift raised platform with some tropical trees on either side. The backdrop was a parking garage and some office buildings across the street.
When I looked at the program, I noticed there were two names for each of the characters. One was for the “voice actor.” As the play began I realized that all the voice actors were out of sight behind me reading their lines, while “movement actors” were onstage in the roles. They used all kinds of body gestures, facial expressions, and even some dance moves to act out the words we were hearing. It may sound very strange, but after a while I really got into it. Perhaps there were actors who had great voices, but not the physical look or physical abilities for a part, or vice versa. The cast was ethnically diverse, the onstage actors bursting with energy, and the voices soared into the night air.
I have seen innumerable theater productions around the world, from Kabuki in Tokyo to Broadway, and in my hometown. But I rank this production, from the Hawaii Shakespeare Festival, as one of the truly unique, creative interpretations I have ever seen. I will never forget it. BRAD IGOU, Lancaster, Pa.
I will never forget a production of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” performed in an outdoor theater by Florida State University students at their summer location on Jekyll Island, Ga. This would have been the early- to mid-70s. The entire audience, arrayed around the grass on our blankets and beach chairs, was eaten alive by mosquitoes, but no one left because it was impossible to tear yourself away. Whoever that Pseudolus was, the role has never been performed more brilliantly. I’ve often wondered where those students are today. They gave my family and so many others an extraordinary gift on a hot summer evening so long ago. REBECCA TILLET, Newtown Pa.
I have been a wardrobe supervisor, technician, stitcher and dresser on/Off Broadway, as well as for film and television, for 45 years. My very first professional job in N.Y.C. was as a dresser for the New York Shakespeare Festival at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. I had seen a show there the summer before and decided it would be the perfect job between my junior and senior year of college. I bugged the wardrobe supervisor, Elonzo Dann, for the second half of 1975 until late spring of 1976. I mailed letters and resumes weekly, called the costume shop and left messages until he hired me, just to stop the barrage. I sublet a studio apartment on West 16th Street for $150 a month, learned the subway system and was paid $100 per week so I could actually live big city life. That summer, there were oodles of young men with bowl haircuts all over New York — and they were all in “Henry V. ” DEBRA KATZ WEBER, Teaneck, N.J.
I was playing the Welsh Captain Fluellen (and Queen Isabel) in a production of “Henry V” starring Liev Schreiber and directed by Mark Wing-Davey. This was July of 2003. We were performing for a full house. The show had been up for several weeks, so we were in command, as it were.
King Harry had made his comradely mingling with his men, moving from fire to fire, rousing their spirits before the battle at Agincourt, when all of a sudden the skies opened up with a downpour. The cast raced offstage — we had to, if for no other reason than to protect the expensive mics we all were wearing. To our amazement we saw that most of the audience was still there. They had jackets pulled over their heads, and programs. The consensus was: Let’s get back out there!
We had to get rid of the microphones and then we trooped out, to great cheers. I’m not sure exactly where we started from but I know that we were out there for the St. Crispin’s Day soliloquy. The glory was that for the last, dramatic quarter of “Henry V,” we were playing those scenes — speaking those words — with the rain POURING on us. In a career now over 60 years, in all media, this is a moment in time I will never forget. PETER GERETY
“Tecumseh!” is an outdoor drama performed in a huge amphitheater in Chillicothe, Ohio. It has been running summers for as long as I can remember. My special memory includes the sound of the Shawnee horses’ hooves thundering on the ground, the voices in the night, and the wonderful costumed actors who brought it to life. All those years ago, it was magical. And a little sad, too. Might be time to see it again when we all creep back to these wonderful outdoor venues. D.L. PREECE, Zionsville, Ind.
It was the summer of ’78, and we’d waited in line for several hours to grab the free tickets for the Shakespeare in the Park production of “The Taming of the Shrew,” with Raul Julia and Meryl Streep. What made this evening especially exciting was, after the show, we’d waited by the stage door to meet Raul Julia (19-year-old theater majors do such things). When he came out, he was more than magnanimous — talking to us about the play, his “food for the world” project and more. We were ready to let him go, when he said, “Which way are you walking? I’m heading this way.” Of course, we said we’re going that way too, to which he replied “Great! Walk with me and we’ll talk some more.” Just then, Meryl Streep came out, and Raul said, “Meryl, come walk with me and my friends.” And with that, on that hot sticky summer night, my three friends and I … and Raul Julia … and Meryl Streep … walked through Central Park, talking about theater, Shakespeare, the injustice of world hunger and anything and everything else that came up. TIM DIERING, Amesbury, Mass.
