Shakespeare troupe debuts new name, location
It is a season of change for the theater company formerly known as the Mahoning Valley Players.
The arts organization has a new name — the Youngstown Shakespeare Company.
It has a new home — Wean Foundation Park in downtown Youngstown. And it is bringing in a professional actor, William Goff, for its production of the comedy “Much Ado About Nothing” this weekend.
In the past, MVP had used Judge Morley Pavilion in Mill Creek MetroParks’ Wick Recreation Area as its performance venue, and Kim Akins, one of the group’s founders, said the move to Wean Park and the name change came simultaneously.
“I always wanted it to be sort of urban and in the city, so let’s make it the Youngstown Shakespeare Company and make the city a part of it,” Akins said.
“Councilwoman Anita Davis is underwriting this show and we’re hoping to be built into the city’s entertainment budget next year. Anita Davis is excited about bringing new art into the city and happy to be part of that.”
Akins said she already is seeing benefits from the changes.
“As soon as we did that, the amount of diversity in the show increased immediately, so I’m happy about that. Hopefully, people who are a part of the city will see this is not an intimidating thing to do and come out.”
The idea to bring in Goff, a former Mahoning Valley resident and Baldwin Wallace University graduate who now lives in Chicago, came after Akins saw him last year in a production of Hamlet.
“I was in Chicago last year, and he said, ‘I’m stepping in at the last minute to play Laertes in `Hamlet.’ Do you want to come?’ Sure, I’ll be happy to watch you fall on your face. He was not scheduled to do that part, he had a day’s notice to do it, and he was stellar. I was really impressed. He was good when he was here, but his skills grew.”
Goff has been performing in Shakespearean productions since he was 12, and his credits include productions with Shakespeare Blood Oath Theater in Chicago and the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival.
Goff’s experience doing Shakespeare with limited rehearsals will come in handy.
Akins said last week that Goff’s first in-person rehearsal with the cast would be Wednesday.
“He has been learning his lines,” she said.
“They’ve done video rehearsals, Zoom rehearsals so he could play off of Jenna Cintavey, who plays Beatrice, to get the rhythm of it right. We sent him the blocking and we’ll plug him in. He’ll have two days of rehearsal before we open the show. I’ve seen the Zoom rehearsal and it’s funny now. He’s worked hard on it already.”
The rest of the cast includes Cintavey, Leslie Whetstine Mausteller, Calvin Brown, Tricia Terlesky, Monica Beasley-Martin, Rob Whiting, Terry Shears, Eric Kibler, Maeve Law, Kat Roman, Richard Smiley, Matilda Mausteller and Vijay Welch-Young, who also is the director.
The show will feature minimal sets with costumes by Robert Dennick Joki. Akins said YSC purchased a mobile dressing room for the actors to use for the park performances.
That adaptability is one of the reasons the Bard’s plays still are produced more than 400 years after they were written.
“The beauty of Shakespeare is in the words. The beauty is in the imagery. I like to say this is centuries old, but the messages in Shakespeare are still current and still relevant. They stage Shakespeare in prisons because the humanity of the message is universal. It lends itself to all kinds of interpretations. You can lay anything on it and come up with something that will make people think,” Akins said.
“It’s also free. (We’re) not paying for rights.”