Our Mission

To bring the timeless works of Shakespeare to the communities of East-Central Indiana, fostering a love for the arts, inspiring creativity, and enriching lives. 

Our Commitment

Through engaging performances, educational outreach, and community collaboration, we strive to cultivate an inclusive cultural landscape where every voice is heard and every story is celebrated.

Our Approach

Original Practice

Performing Shakespeare with "original practices" refers to staging his plays using techniques and conventions that would have been used during Shakespeare's time, particularly in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. This approach seeks to recreate the historical conditions in which Shakespeare’s works were first performed, focusing on aspects such as:

The use of simple, minimalistic sets, often with no elaborate scenery, as there were few props and backdrops in Elizabethan theaters like The Globe. Instead, the focus is on the actors and their language.

Actors perform with heightened vocal delivery, physicality, and gestures. The style is more presentational and rhetorical, rather than modern naturalistic acting. Dialogue is delivered with clarity and rhythm, drawing attention to the poetic and rhetorical nature of Shakespeare’s language.

Costumes are relatively simple, and actors often use contemporary clothing of the time and place of the play. 

The audience is interactive with the performance. There is no fourth wall; actors often speak directly to the audience, engage in banter, and respond to their reactions.

Anyone can play any role.

Performances were typically in natural light during the day, so "original practices" often involve performing in daylight or with limited artificial lighting. There were no sound systems or microphones, so actors had to project their voices to reach a large audience.

In Shakespeare’s time, plays often included music, performed live during the production, so ours does too!  This could be instrumental or vocal, adding to the atmosphere of the play.

The goal of performing Shakespeare with "original practices" is not necessarily to create an "authentic" version of a play, but rather to evoke the spirit of the original performances and honor the conditions under which Shakespeare’s works were created and initially performed. It's a way of giving audiences a more immediate, energetic experience, with a focus on language, performance, and engagement.