Shake a spear.

Last night, for the first time in my life, I finally saw Bill Shakespeare done properly. But it wasn’t the staging of the material that made it great. It was the nature of the audience. Let me explain.

Time has a way of distorting how works of art are interpreted, especially in terms of what audiences think they are supposed to get out them. The Mona Lisa was not a well-known painting for several hundred years after Leonardo da Vinci’s death, but has become synonymous with greatness in portraiture. A person viewing it in 1650, at a time when it was not a legendary icon, would probably notice the great technique that must have went into painting it, and would likely have stopped there. However, later generations began to see the painting as one of the most enigmatic pieces of art ever created, (“What does that smile mean?”) and few can now look on it without feeling an urge to wrestle with mysterious, confounding questions. And yet these intricate interactions between painting and observer were either not present for 16th, 17th and 18th century audiences, or they were simply not considered remarkable by commentators for hundreds of years.

If the Mona Lisa represents one extreme of a spectrum, then the other end might just be occupied by the 1960’s Batman TV series. Yes, the extremely campy one with the catchy theme song. When generation X laid their eyes on re-runs of this goofy show, some viewers found it easy prey to be mocked. The absurd fight scenes (“Bam!” “Pow!” “Spiff!”), scenes of Batman and Robin riding a tandem Bike around Gotham, a Joker who was perhaps the least menacing villain in television history; it seemed laughable that this show was supposed to provide any sort of thrills. It became a staple of ironic appreciation. The only problem? The show never intended to be taken seriously in the slightest. Present day viewers interpreting the show as evidence of the naivete of past generations have missed the point. The show’s creators saw it as an exercise in goofiness, meant to be enjoyed as silly camp. Viewers getting a laugh out of the show because they can not imagine who anyone could take it seriously are simply unaware that no one was ever supposed to. A simple change in assumptions can cause greatly different reactions and interpretations to the same material.

Today, Shakespeare has been moved into some strange realms. Above all, Shakespeare’s plays are now made by and for high school students. Because the language of the plays can sometimes be pretty dense, and because the material is hundreds of years old and treated by many as sacred text, both the actors and the audiences tend to assume that the material is somehow above them, or “over my head”. Interested students are aware that Shakespeare wrote his plays for the masses, but even with this awareness, because of the mystique that now surrounds Shakespeare as the most legendary writer in the history of the English language, it’s very hard to picture these plays as being for the everyman. I don’t think there’s much to be done about it for teenaged thespians. I’m now convinced that to understand what it was like for audiences hundreds of years ago, you need to see it performed in the right circumstances. Now, let me tell you one way that the circumstances can be ‘right’.

First, it should be Saturday night. You’re going to see Shakespeare! What could be greater? Seeing some Shakespeare is a perfectly good way to spend your Saturday evening. If you were John Q. Peasant living in the Elizabethan era, this was like, the highlight of your week.

Number two: It should be at a bar. Or maybe outside somewhere. But there should definitely be people in all different states of sober and intoxicated, all mingling about between performances, but falling silent at the appropriate time. Rowdy, but respectful. Good old riff-raff, here for a show.

Third, it needs to be packed. Let me tell you something about this bar I was at watching this Shakespeare. Half the people couldn’t see for shit. There were heads in the way. There was a side area where a big black curtain was blocking much of the stage for anyone who happened to be standing over there, and there were a good twenty people over there just because there was no where else to go. This place was jam-packed with people and there was no way to improve your view. You were stuck with whatever you got. And that was a good thing.

And finally, you need actors who really like the material, but don’t think that they’re delivering the word of God. Everyone on that stage believed in what they were doing, and were thrilled to be doing it, and none of them fell into the trap of losing the humanity of the characters. That’s what happens when people view Shakespeare’s work as beyond them. The characters cease to be people, full of expressive emotion. There was none of that last night. The energy was always high, and the actors were so at ease with themselves.

All these factors combined together to make a truly special experience. The show was a selection of scenes and monologues from throughout Shakespeare’s work, most of them very famous, a few relatively obscure. There was a good mix of the light and the serious. When it was serious, the crowd was clearly very engaged. When the scenes were comedic, the performances really shined. I’ve never laughed nearly so hard at Shakespeare before. It was a real joy to see these scenes working so well (particularly when they did the final scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream). It’s always impressive when very old comedy can still get big laughs. Nothing dates as quickly or as permanently as humor.
Anyway, I really wish I could go into more detail about this experience, but I can’t. In fact, that’s my whole point. I appreciated these scenes more than I had in the past because I was seeing them properly, in circumstances similar to how they were viewed centuries ago. It’s not something that can really be conveyed. In other words, you have to be there. But I think I’m very lucky that, last night, I was there.