Shakespeare Takes on the Galaxy

“Arrrarroowwrrerr!” senior Ben Hogoboom growls as he flaunts a bright yellow Teletubby suit. He’s sprinting through the Death Star. Senior Warren Charleston follows close behind, decked in a Han Solo outfit. Two Stormtroopers appear in front of them and the lights flick out.

Last Friday and Saturday night DRAMAT ran its show “Shakespeare Star Wars,” a spin off on “Star Wars: A New Hope.” The black box theater was packed with students at each showing.

“At first, I was a bit skeptical. As a huge fan of “Star Wars,” and not of Shakespeare, I didn’t know how the mashup would be,” upper Sean Taylor said. He had to sit on the floor because all the seats were full. “I thought it might be boring, but I had faith in the performers, and I’m glad I went.”

Senior and director Tucker Lemos adapted the show from Ian Doescher’s “Verily a New Hope.” The original transcript was not meant to be performed; in fact, its purpose was to serve as a learning aid for those interested in Shakespeare. A large amount of time was put into script manipulation, especially into the modification of senior Harry Tibbett’s role as Luke Skywalker.

“It started as a very large play, and we had to cut down a lot,” Lemos said. “We had to work at keeping the storyline intact while finding only the funny moments.”

Senior and producer Liz Hoover explained that logistically some scenes simply weren’t feasible. “Almost half of every act [was cut]. Honestly, there were some scenes that we couldn’t conceivably do on the black box stage,” she said. “The famous trash compactor scene from “Star Wars” is really iconic, but also pretty hard to do on a stage where the walls don’t move. We chose to cut for length reasons and for logistical reasons.”

DRAMAT held casting auditions at the end of fall term, and the selected crew of ten went to work immediately after Thanksgiving break. With a cast of eight seniors, an upper and a lower, they began to hold two hour rehearsals every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday—even Principal’s Day was filled with work.

“At first, I was a bit skeptical. As a huge fan of “Star Wars,” and not of Shakespeare, I didn’t know how the mashup would be.”

Despite performing an abridged version of “Verily a New Hope,” a large amount of the time was still spent on memorizing lines. Tibbetts, cast as Luke, was the spotlight of the show and had to memorize many lengthy monologues.

“The monologues were definitely not fun to memorize, but I thought they worked really well as a gimmick,” Tibbetts said.

“He had 631 lines when we first started. After we cut down he probably still had around 500,” Lemos said. “I’m deeply impressed with him.”

On the other hand, senior Augustus Gilchrist didn’t say a single sentence onstage. “Being R2-D2 was a compelling chance to do two things: explore what it truly means to be something other than a living and breathing, human and also wear a trashcan,” he said. “My favorite part about the role was not having to learn any lines, and my least favorite part was waking up for 10 a.m. rehearsals just to say ‘beep squeak hoo.’”

Many of the audience members commended the show for its innovative humor. After overcoming his initial misgivings, Taylor said that he was “really impressed with the production put on by DRAMAT” and glad that he attended. “Typically, the shows are about ten minutes or so because it’s a club, but these students, especially Harry Tibbetts, took the initiative to learn their lines and entertain their classmates for nearly an hour and a half.”

“I absolutely adored Augustus’ portrayal of R2-D2’s speech,” senior Michael Tuchler said. “It was very beep beep whistle beep wee-hoo.”

There were many memorable moments scattered throughout the play, ranging from substantial monologues to well-exectured R2-D2 sound effects. Tibbetts’ monologues were both humorous and meaningful; the Mos Eisley Cantina scene from the movie was well choreographed and has now become Tibbetts’ personal favorite. Senior Thomas Stockham made various cameos throughout the show, and his renditions of the “Star Wars” and “Cantina” music themes were outstanding.

Lower Emily Robb, like many others, was caught off guard at some moments of the play, but nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed the surprises. “My favorite moment was when [Tibbetts] threw [his boot] at the guy singing in the balcony. I don’t think there’s anything that could’ve been improved, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.”

Senior and assistant director Jake Willett was surprised by the audience turnout and proud of the cast’s stellar performance. “I was backstage for the majority of the performance, so I couldn’t see a lot of what was going on, but the first time I heard the audience crack up was such a relieving and great feeling,” he said. “Hearing people constantly laughing was great because it told me that all our hard work paid off.”

In spite of the praise the production received, Hoover believed that, like any performance, there was room for improvement. “We really didn’t have all of our lines memorized until the dress rehearsal,” she said. “There wasn’t enough time to work everything out, which I don’t think the audience noticed, but there were a lot of scenes we could have pulled off even better if we had had another week to practice."

At the end of the day, “Shakespeare Star Wars” was still well appreciated by both the cast and the audience. “Shows like this are very important because they can reach a wide audience,” Gilchrist said.

“Some people didn’t know their lines, transitions got rough and we didn’t have real Jawas. But that’s life. Life gets brutal,” Gilchrist joked. “[But] in all seriousness, the cast and directors did a fantastic job pulling this all together. Tucker was a patient director, Liz, a competent producer and Jake Willett, the show’s ‘unsung hero’ as our creative consultant.”