Summer is just around the corner in Vancouver and that means a couple of things: you already have your base layer of sunburn, you’ve realized that your bike desperately needs a tune-up and you’re in search of a friend who’s got a patio or backyard to hang out in. For you thespians out there, it also means that the new season of Bard on the Beach — Vancouver’s own Shakespeare festival — is well on its way.
Celebrating its 28th season this year, Bard on the Beach — Western Canada’s largest not-for-profit, professional Shakespeare Festival — looks to set the stage with four plays from the Shakespeare canon, plus a one-act play written by Vancouver’s Mark Leiren-Young. On the Mainstage, you can catch Much Ado About Nothing and The Winter’s Tale. On the Howard Family Stage, you’ll find The Merchant of Venice, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Leiren-Young’s Shylock.
This festival is a summertime staple for the theatre of Vancouver and this season is even more exciting for UBC theatregoers, with two alumni from the BFA Acting program, Luisa Jojic and Ashley O’Connell, featured in the performances.
Luisa Jojic, who plays Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice and Pantina/Outlaw in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, is a well known face at Bard on the Beach. This season marks her seventh on stage, and twelfth as a teaching artist. As the season heads towards its opening, she said she looks forward to tech, which is where costumes, lighting, sound, and set all come into the mix to create the full world of the play.
Her biggest challenge thus far?
“Maintaining focus in rehearsals with Gertie, the basset hound starring in Two Gentlemen of Verona. She steals every scene and all of our hearts!”
Ashley O’Connell, who plays Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing and Lord Rogero in A Winter's Tale, is heading into his second season with Bard on the Beach, after performing as an apprentice back in 2009.
His biggest challenge?
“Trying to make Shakespeare's clown funny for a modern audience and also trying to get a handle on the amount of set pieces we are moving around between scenes – it's quite a lot and is a complicated track.”
While Shakespeare can be notorious for seeming inaccessible, Bard on the Beach aims to create shows that have varying degrees of resonance with their audiences.
“The themes have been explored many times in art and literature and are not new, but Shakespeare's unique ability to express these themes with such raw beauty and succinctness is unmatched in English. For that reason alone, his works are important,” said O'Connell. “His gift is to unpack even the most trivial of impulses, the lowest of motives and to turn them into exquisite pieces of poetry. Even his worst plays contain passages which quite simply stop the breath.”
Jojic added that “the challenge inherent in creating an accessible Shakespearean performance, lies in finding and communicating the contemporary experience of the story. The brilliance of Shakespeare's playwriting can be seen in his multi-dimensional characters and that is timeless. As an actor playing Shakespeare, I strive to get inside the language to unlock the character's drives and desires, and hopefully the audience connects with those as a way into the play.”
“Bard on the Beach encompasses so many of the best things our city has to offer: art, culture, nature and an entertainingly good time,” said Jojic.
“Theatre can provide comfort and wisdom in these worrying times,” added O'Connell. “It can provide at least a little relief. As the Bard himself puts it: “How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.””
The Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival runs from June 1 to September 23 in Vanier Park. Tickets can be purchased through their box office online or by phone.