Last week, when everyone else was running around waving their hands above their heads in preparation for Hurricane Irene, I was driving down to attend the New York Renaissance Faire.  Now I know what you’re thinking.  The Ren Faire is a repository for geeks and freaks unable to function in any other subset of life, why would anyone with a single cell of gray matter in her head attend?

First things first: a good Ren Faire is good fun.  Come on, they have belly dancers, jousting, flashy stage combat fights, and pretty costumes.  If it’s a good faire, they also have talented performers.  Sometimes, there’s even good food.  Now I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill Renaissance Faire, there are only a few on the East Coast that truly count as top-rung.  If a faire has a permanent site and permanent buildings, it is worlds above a faire sans permanent site mostly run out of tents.  Secondly, I’ve been going to NYRF since I was a kid, so a trip there is more than a little nostalgic.  And last, since I was an actor out of New York for long enough to count, I do tend to know some of the performers.

Oh and my sister’s a member of the cast so now I definitely know some of the performers.

This year, NYRF has made the artistic decision to have a few famous playwrights running around (including Marlowe and good Will himself).  In addition, they’ve smattered the day with several performances of what they call “Guerilla Shakespeare”; Shakespeare scenes which erupt seemingly from nowhere and actors that spring from the streets to launch into pre-rehearsed Bardisms.

Normally, these scenes aren’t announced beforehand… but I’ve got some connections.  So I had the unique and wonderful opportunity to witness a Guerilla version of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.

Let me get it out of the way; I love this scene.  LOVE this scene.  What girl wouldn’t?  It’s classic, it’s romantic, it’s beautiful, it’s chock full of the mush that makes up a hopeless heart.  Since I do love this scene so much, I have extremely strong ideas about its performance.

NYRF made a bold artistic decision and, since their Juliet was a fairy who doesn’t speak in human language, had her do the scene in fairy language; a gesture-filled utterance of clicks and pops as well as crooning and chiming.  Romeo responded in regular Earth English with his lines.

The scene commenced with Juliet already at her balcony and Romeo scrounging for a ladder from the surrounding stalls.  He set up his ladder then milled about the crowd a little while Juliet played Peek-a-boo from on high.  When Romeo spoke, it was to the assembled patrons who has congregated because they were pretty sure that something was going on due to the age-old rule that if enough people stop and look at something obviously it’s interesting enough to look at.

As Romeo walked through the small quorum simply speaking to us, I couldn’t help but

Fairy Juliet and Romeo at the balcony

believe this to be truly authentic Elizabethan theatre.  The audience, in direct contact with the actor, was unconfined by the constraints of the physical theatre space.  Without a stage and seating to separate us, we were all just living – existing together and experiencing something as it unfolded before our eyes.  We were groundlings; free to emote, relate, interject, or walk away if we chose to.  Romeo wasn’t some on-high concept, he was right there with us.

Juliet’s manner of speaking, of course, denied us the privilege of listening to the infamous words which should have come tripping from her mouth.  “What’s in a name?” and “Swear not by the moon!” became a tumult of mimed motions and emotions.  For that, I think it worked.  I’m not sure if it would have worked with any other scene, but for this one it did.

This scene is so deeply embedded into the popular psyche that even most non-Bardy muggles know at least some of the lines.  They know the idea of the scene, they know the iconic imagery, and for that it is extremely difficult to perform the scene.  If everyone watching already has their own ideas regarding what’s about to happen, how can you make the scene fresh, interesting, and exciting for every single one of them?  This choice made it such that we were engaged.  We couldn’t go through the motions of theatre, we had to truly pay attention to understand what was going on.  Rather than face the age-old question of “how do you say ‘wherefore art thou Romeo’ in a new way when ten million other actors have said it ten million times before you?”, NYRF’s choice eliminated the conundrum for their Juliet.

In short, yes, I was listening rather than mouthing the words with the actors.  The only shame about this is a scheduling oversight on the part of NYRF which involved an extremely loud batch of raucous peasants making a great deal of noise directly under the performance space.  This made even the English difficult to hear as it was by and large drowned out by the sonorous sound of bagpipes.

In addition, I applaud the creativity of the company in this endeavor.  They managed to produce a unique Shakespeare which was relevant, dynamic, and didn’t step over the dangerous boundary into the land of Hamlet-on-the-moon-concept-Shakespeare.

Oh yea, and the actors were pretty talented too.  Though I’ll admit, I’m a little biased on that one.