PORT ANGELES — Don’t dismiss your dream, no matter how the world scoffs.
That’s the message of “The Other Shakespeare,” a stage play opening tonight and running through Sunday at the Port Angeles High School auditorium, 304 E. Park Ave.
Curtain times for the production, which imagines a gifted sister to the renowned playwright, are 7:30 p.m. today through Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
Admission is $7 for adults, $6 for students and free for children younger than 10.
This is the story — told by playwright Laura Annawyn Shamas — of William Shakespeare’s sister, Cassandra, a poet in her own right who never had the chance to see her works on stage.
Her contemporaries, after all, included brother Bill as well as writers John Webster and Christopher Marlowe; Cassie’s era just wasn’t conducive to female wordsmiths.
In the play, she writes sonnets just the same, confiding in her brother as she navigates the strict confines around women of the 16th century.
Cassandra, or Cassie as she’s called in the play, is the one “Other Shakespeare” character who doesn’t appear in actual history.
Everybody else, including the Shakespeares’ parents and the aforementioned rival writers, comes from real life.
And her story, said Port Angeles High School drama coach Kelly Lovall, is an ideal one to be told by teenagers.
Fourteen of them comprise “The Other Shakespeare’s” cast: Port Angeles High junior Bethany Bond portrays Cassie, and sophomores Hope Chamberlain and Lucy Bert play William Shakespeare and Marlowe, respectively.
Lovall is directing “The Other Shakespeare” as a kind of precursor for the school’s production of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” in the fall.
“I chose this play first because I thought it would be interesting to explore the Renaissance period from the women’s perspective before moving into a world as seen through a man’s eye,” she said.
Her students agreed and have dived headlong into the production, which is replete with period costumes and Tudor-style murals.
The story, though, is told in contemporary language; Shamas wrote the play during the 1980s.
During Shakespeare’s time, “women were not allowed on the stage,” Lovall added, “and though there were some female writers during the period, there were no records of them writing for the stage — at least not any that I’ve been able to find in my research.
“We can only conjecture that if women did write for the stage during the 1500s, it was either under a pseudonym, or they were not taken seriously and their works were dismissed.”
“The Other Shakespeare” explores how Shakespeare’s sister would have contended with such notions. This scenario, Lovall noted, was first asserted by Virginia Woolf in her famed essay of 1928, “A Room of One’s Own.”
“Let me imagine, since the facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister,” Woolf wrote.
Lovall believes this play will both entertain and intrigue audiences with its mix of history, ideas and accessible language.
“There are a lot of fun antics that add humor throughout,” she said, adding that the young actors are reveling in their Renaissance-style outfits.
Filling out the cast are sophomore Jill Nickles as Nick Green, sophomore Robert Stephens as Richard Burbage and senior Megan Reader, junior Marissa Wilson and sophomores Kelsey Williams and Lucy Bert as John, Mary, Joan and Gilbert Shakespeare. Former Port Angeles High Thespian Society members Amanda Bond and Jill Lidback and freshmen Nicholas Lippert and Megan Mundy play tavern patrons.
The 90-minute show is for people of all ages, Lovall said, though younger children might not catch all of the literary references.
Proceeds benefit the school Thespian Society, and refreshments will be available in the auditorium lobby during the 15-minute intermission.
“This show is about the creative spirit,” Lovall said. “It incites that feeling of ‘follow your heart.’”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
