On Friday, April 1 and Saturday, April 2, Deep End APO will present the first of its three spring shows, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) by Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield.
“It’s about three actors – that we’ve chosen to use the actor’s names, so it’ll be Christian [Conway ’18], Tara [Maloney ’19], and Tom [Reuter ’17] – trying to put on all the complete works of William Shakespeare within 97 minutes,” director Sara Albertson ’18 said. “It’s a slapstick comedy about how things go wrong, when people misinterpret things, but it’s a show that brings a lot of awareness to what Shakespeare is actually like.”
But don’t be intimidated if you don’t consider yourself a Shakespeare connoisseur.
“If you are a Shakespeare fan you’ll pick up on some of the little jokes in there, but by the by you will have a good time if you know even nothing about him,” Conway said.
“I think normally people are driven away from Shakespeare because of the content and the language within the show, but I think this is a really good, accessible way to get introduced to Shakespeare and to learn a little bit about his shows,” Albertson said.
Prepping for the show was no walk in the park, especially for the actors involved.
“There’s a lot to memorize, like each of us probably has about 30 pages of memorization, because there’s only three people on stage,” Conway said.
Albertson described the lively theater scene on campus, but how such an active community can create scheduling conflicts.
“I love it, because the St. Olaf community has so much theater and performing arts going on next month … but it’s also taking up so many weekends, so it’s hard to fit them in and encourage people to come to our show but not having them sacrifice going to another show for it, it was a really hard scheduling thing,” Albertson said.
Deep End APO is a student run theater organization on campus that sponsors student submitted productions, and encourages students of all backgrounds and experience levels to get involved in theater on campus.
The show will be performed in the Larson Blue Room at 7:00 p.m. on April 1 and 2, and tickets go on sale Monday, March 28 for a dollar each.
“I think it’ll be a good time, definitely gonna get some laughs out of it … these actors are gonna be putting in so much work too, and I think it’s gonna be an awesome thing to watch it all come together,” Albertson said.
“And it’s just silly, and fun. It’ll be really funny,” Conway said.
Complete Works is just one of Deep End’s three shows this semester, so keep an eye out for The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare and Woman in Mind by Alan Ayckbourn in early May.
