This video is a few years old now, but it just makes us so happy that we have to share it! Check out these folks lining up for Shakespeare in the Park as if it were a rock concert or an American Idol audition. This is what Shax in the Park is all about — joy, community, and a love of these amazing plays!

Wikipedia defines, “Shakespeare in the Park is a concept used across the world, as a form of free public presentation of William Shakespeare’s works. Such performances exist in Australia, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.”

We love this idea of being part of something larger than ourselves.  At a micro-level, outdoor Shakespeare productions bring communities together for a few hours at a time to enjoy a performance. This shared experience carries beyond those few hours together, though.  Ask any artist who has participated in an outdoor production, and he or she will have some great stories to tell. Performing in a Shakespeare in the Park production guarantees an actor’s place in a worldwide fraternity of those who have suffered the elements from freezing rain to intense heat; competed to be heard against of trains, planes, ambulances, or screaming children; and shared the stage with a wandering child or a curious squirrel. Actors carry these war stories as badges of honor and joy.

Likewise, watching a Shakespeare in the Park performance as an audience member leaves an indelible mark on the memory. Whether it’s the wine and picnic laid out on a blanket, or the wind in the trees at the exact moment when Macbeth approaches the witches, or the stars twinkling above as Juliet says, “Take him and cut him out in little stars/And he will make the face of heaven so fine/ That all the world will be in love with night…” — outdoor performances have a special magic that sticks with a person.

What’s your favorite memory of Shakespeare in the Park?

With the weather in Chicago warming up, we are getting excited for a summer of Shakespeare!  In fact, right now it feels even nicer than a summer’s day, which brings Shakespeare to mind anyway…

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By faith, or Nature’s changing course untrimmed,
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe and eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.