Here are some photos from last night's rehearsal! I got a new camera for Christmas (Yay!) so I'll be post more photos of rehearsals and other Storefront Shakespeare stuff. On Wednesday some of my actors are going to learn some basic wrestling moves in preparation for the fight choreographer Adam Armstrong's rehearsal next week! I'll try to get some good shots of that or you and I'll post them on Thursday.
I hope you are having a wonderful week!

We are going to start work soon on the wrestling match  between the young Orlando and the wrestler Charles in As You Like It. Here are some different matches from various As You Like Its to tide you over until you can come and see our show!

We are having songs written for us for As You Like It, which I'm not ready to share with you yet, but there are songs out there that remind me of certain characters or scenes; these are a couple of them:

Duke Fredericka, who usurps her sister's court  makes me think of Eartha Kitt, here she is in 1969 singing Uska Dara -

I also really love this bit from Some Like It Hot with Jack Lemmon and Joe E. Brown tangoing together. I have added a tango to a scene where Rosalind is in disguise as Ganymede and Orlando is courting her, pretending she's Rosalind. He thinks he's just joking around with this funny young man but every now and then he seems to forget (if only for a moment )that he's only playing.

So, we are setting As You Like It in modern India and I see Orlando as a video blogger.
Here he is, in his first video blog, with his reaction to Act 1, scene 1:

Anyone want to come with me to see The Tempest in Chicago at midnight on Thursday? Here is the showtime link. I am so excited to see this movie! It has been out in New York since last Friday, but this Friday it comes to Chicago! The midnight showing will be at 150 W. Roosevelt Road Chicago IL 60605. Tickets are 12.50 for adults.

So, what do you think? Amazing, right?

The first week and a half of rehearsals has gone well, I have a great cast and I am really excited by what each actor brings to the table and how well that works with the other actors in this cast. Our music is being written,  just for us, so you will be hearing original songs when you come to see our show!

We are still looking for a permanent location for our theater company. We have been so busy starting up As You Like It that we haven't had much time to focus on our space search, but we have started it up again. We are looking for a location, probably in a strip mall, where there would be some big name stores as anchors (and as the major profit for the landlord) but with a lot of smaller empty spaces. Our rent would have to be based on a percentage of our box office profits, but we would work to ensure that there was always something going on in the theater so that there wouldn't be periods without profit. Ideally, our space would be around 2000 square feet with at least two bathrooms and a backstage area, but we're flexible on that. If anyone knows of a location that fits that description or of a location that might be willing to work out that sort of deal with us, please have them call 630-677-0983 or email StorefrontShakespeare@gmail.com.

Here is the actor who plays Orlando in his first video blog!

We have our first rehearsal for As You Like It tonight! We're going to introduce everyone and the read-through the script so everyone knows what parts they have and what is going on in the story. I love the first read-through because you get to hear everyone read their roles for the first time.
I'll be posting video footage of the rehearsal here tomorrow!

Many people are surprised to find Storefront Shakespeare operates in Naperville instead of in Chicago (the city with the largest number of theaters in the world) but I think that the Chicago theater market is over-saturated. The nearest professional Shakespeare Theater is thirty miles away from Naperville and I think a lot of people in this area only go into the city for special occasions. I think that there is a market in this area for productions of Shakespeare and other classics. I believe that at $10 a ticket people are likely to come to see our shows for a fun date or a night out on days when they wouldn't even consider driving into the city.