The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Playground Shakespeare adapting ‘Star Wars’
Turns out, in this case, a galaxy far, far away is located at Mentor Beach Park.
With the return of Playground Shakespeare, in its third season, the theater team is undertaking its biggest twist yet with “William Shakespeare’s Star Wars,” adapted from the books by author Ian Doescher.
Three different shows, one for each episode, will be presented as: “Verily, A New Hope” — June 25; “The Empire Striketh Back” — July 16; and “The Jedi Doth Return” — Aug. 6.
All performances are free and begin at 2 p.m. Guests are encouraged to bring blankets and lawn chairs.
Each show will have a different cast of past, present and future members of (Mentor) Shore Drama Club from Shore Middle School.
Mentor Beach Park is located at 7779 Lake Shore Blvd. in Mentor-on-theLake.
Director/Drama Advisor Laura Hart said Doescher noticed the common link between Shakespeare plays and “Star Wars” in the grand themes of heroes and villains, father/son relationships and destiny and fate.
“He was inspired to write the screenplays to all six movies, plus ‘The Force Awakens,’ as if they were Shakespearian scripts. Many of the characters have similarities with Shakespeare characters.
“The entire script is written in iambic pentameter — all lines contain 10 syllables in an unstressed-stressed pattern, giving speech the ‘da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM’ pattern,” she said. “Every scene ends with a couplet (two rhyming lines), and like Shakespeare’s comic characters, the narrator speaks entirely in an ABAB rhyme pattern.”
Playground Shakespeare was created to expose students and the community at large to Shakespeare’s plays and speech patterns.
“In the past we’ve faced the struggle of students needing to comprehend somewhat complex plots written in a language they aren’t accustomed to in just a week’s time,” Hart said. “When I stumbled across my first physical copy of Doescher’s book at a library in February, it was like finding an answer to prayer. Here we take a plot and characters the students and audience are very familiar with and tell their stories with Shakespeare’s language.
“It’s a beautiful bridge between the past and the present. I did have to cut down the books into manageable scripts for an hour-long show, so if audience members enjoy these plays I hope they will get their hands on copies of Doescher’s books and read the full scripts for themselves.”
Hart believes a large majority of people have seen “Star Wars” and therefore will find the productions familiar but entertaining in a different scope.
“It’s hilarious to hear ‘Star Wars’ reinterpreted as Shakespeare,” she said. “Characters tell the audience exactly what they’re feeling and thinking in flowery, metaphorical language. All the iconic lines from the movies made it into the book, and many survived into our final cut. They’re still iconic and recognizable, but even funnier in the new context. You have a lot of descriptive language in those plays since the actors had to paint the scene for the audience with their words.
“This just seemed like such a fun idea, the juxtaposition of the two art forms, space opera mixed with poetic language. I know my students, many of them are ‘Star Wars’ geeks, as am I, and it just seemed like a perfect fit. After I read Han’s post-Greedo line, I was hooked. Ian Doescher writes with a perfect blend of wit and melodrama. It’s magnificent.”
All Playground Shakespeare’s costumes are sourced from the drama closet at Shore Middle, individual closets and a few iconic things from Amazon.
Hart said it’s important that the main roles have at least one costume piece embodying the character, for example Princess Leia’s dress and hair buns; Darth Vader’s mask and cape; and R2-D2’s T-shirt (print pattern).
“The students and I all feel like we understand Shakespeare in a new, fresh way after working with these scripts. We can’t wait to take the stage, and we encourage everyone to give the books a try.”