Freddy Hinkle as a feuding Montague from "Romeo and Juliet" and Christopher Evans as "Puck" from "Midsummer Night's Dream" roamed the Shakespeare Festival on Saturday.
The rain came dropping down, down, down, but the First Annual Orcas Island Shakespeare Festival filled the streets and lanes with Fairies and Witches, Capulets and Montagues, Royalty and Goat-Herdesses, Pucks and Portias, Bailiffs, Rascals and Weeping Ophelias. A coterie of chirping Fairies accompanied Fairy Queen Grace McCune throughout the day.
By all accounts, it was a shining success, despite the downpours.
At the Shakespeare Festival 2012 concluded with the Orcas Center performance of “Hamlet” by the Seattle Shakespeare Company, with the stage littered with the dead bodies and ghosts of King Hamlet, his wife Gertrude, Claudius, Polonius, his daughter Ophelia, his son Laertes, AND Prince Hamlet.
Second-grader Cailyn Tucker, her head encircled by a wreath made at The Nest, receives a lavender wand at Portia's Courtyard.
The company’s assistant education manager, Casey Brown, stepped forward to thank the Orcas Chamber of Commerce, the Orcas Center, the Company’s hosts at Turtleback Inn Bed and Breakfast, and others for bringing the Shakespearian actors to Orcas. On Friday, they performed Romeo and Juliet” for Orcas middle- and high-schoolers.
The Shakespeare Festival is a campaign to attract visitors to Orcas Island during the “shoulder” seasons of spring and fall. It has been in the plans since late last fall, with Shakespearian actress and teacher Jane Alden spearheading the artistic side of it, assisted by committee members
- Bev Leyman
- Antoinette Botsford
- Beth Baker
- Sharon Schmidt
- Peja Schussler
- Marcia Spees
- Mary Jane Elgin
- Patty Monaco
- Paige McCormick
Last week, those participants volunteering to be Shakespearian characters and musicians received an informal “script” of the six hours between the sidewalk parade at 10 a.m. and the outdoor trial of a street hooligan at 3:30 p.m. Craftsmen and artisans sold their wares on the Village Green, and a troupe of Morris Dancers hailed from Seattle.
Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Lance Evans and President Michell Marshall hoped that individual businesses would take up the challenge to revisit Elizabethan times, for the benefit of island businesses.
Following the events, Evans said, “Overall we felt the Festival was a success, both for island visitors walking the streets, and for islanders who took to it like they do to most celebrations and jumped right in. We expect to be doing it again in 2013!?
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It was a great event, and couldn’t have been done without the very hard work of the Chamber’s organizing committee: Susan Gudgell, Mary Noesen & Michell Marshall. With Jane Alden’s vision, it all came together beautifully!
Great fun and I’m still hoarse from too much town crying, and I’m still not fond of tights.