Rick Koster offers weekly lists of ideas, notions and things that must be seen to be believed

Who knows who first thought to produce Shakespeare plays outdoors to take advantage of the summer season? Probably ol’ Shake himself, who might have staged “Timon of Athens” on the deck of the Globe Theater whilst grilling a few shanks of mutton. The promise of free barbecue, of course, was a clever way to entice folks to see “Timon,” which, let’s face it, wasn’t shattering any box office records.

Anyway, all these centuries later, it’s definitely a successful concept. Who among us doesn’t enjoy filling a cooler with a bit of wine and cheese and fruit and freshly baked bread — no mutton — and heading off to a park or band shell or forest glade or beach to enjoy summer stock folks performing any of five of The Bard’s roughly 38 plays?

Because, yes, these outdoor Shakespeare organizers learned a valuable lesson from “Timon of Athens” and also from the rock band Foreigner. That would be: stick with the hits. No one wants to see “Pericles, Prince of Wherever” or hear anything that came after “Foreigner 4.”

Anyway, if indeed the Summer Shakespeare formula is to re-stage “Hamlet” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “King Lear” and “Romeo and Juliet” and “Macbeth” and “The Tempest” and “Love’s Labour’s Lost” over and over, there is also a well-established tradition involving a “let’s at least shake it up a bit” strategy. Which is to say, many directors conceptualize productions set in modern times. Shake’s themes and conflicts are timeless and universal, after all, and so a company like the Colonial Theater in Westerly, for example, is setting its July 20-Aug. 7 “Hamlet” in the moments just before World War I.

Traditionalists sometimes cringe at such innovations, but I think that’s because no one’s taken it far enough. I’d like, then, to announce the 2017 inaugural season of the Rick Koster Summer Shakespeare Festival. Not only will I broaden the repertoire with less-performed plays, but I’ll also incorporate some brilliant and visionary twists. Here’s the schedule:

1 “Julius Caesar,” taking place in “Leave It to Beaver’s” community of Mayfield, with the principal cast members transposed to Wally, the Beav and their chums Eddie Haskell, Lumpy, Gilbert, Whitey, Tooey and, inexplicably, Bob from Bob’s Discount Furniture

2 “The Winter’s Tale,” set during August in Iran’s Lut Desert, which in 2005 reached 159 degrees

3 . “Henry IV, part one,” in which the events of the play occur in the same space where a separate but simultaneous company is trying to stage “Troilus and Cressida”

4 “As You Like It,” adapted to take place four weeks before the original Shakespeare version.