Shakespeare in the Barn

There's something profoundly real and human about a homespun Shakespeare production. Biba Kayewich

I sit in the dark, my back against the rough wooden wall of the barn, knees pulled in close in the cramped space, sweat running down my shoulders, trying to stifle the sound of my creaking stool. The air is stuffy and humid enough to swim in.

Through a seam between the planks of the stage wing, I can see the audience: a varied assembly of all ages, their faces bright and expectant, turned toward the light, their eyes riveted to the stage, which lies just a few feet from where I am concealed.

From the other side of the curtain my castmate struts upon the stage, the stage I built with my own hands.

“I thank my stars, I am happy!” he crows. “I will be strange, stout, in yellow stockings, and cross-gartered, even with the swiftness of putting on!”

A tide of laughter sweeps and swells and rocks the audience.

My eyes meet those of the others backstage, and, wordless, we grin.

Our friend on stage at this moment is, of course, Malvolio, and this is, of course, Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”—in a barn.

A Newfound Tradition

For the past several summers, I’ve acted in amateur productions of Shakespeare’s plays, staged inside my parents’ barn loft. When they purchased the property, this space was little more than a storage area for old lumber, chicken wire, five-gallon buckets filled with who knows what, and a battered basketball hoop. In hopes of creating a gathering space, a place where events could be held and culture and community nourished, we cleared and cleaned the loft. Learning the necessary skills as we went, we ran electrical, built a stage and wings, put in a storage closet, and installed a bar.

Each year, a few more oddments are added, a few more improvements made: better stage lighting, chandeliers hanging from a bale conveyor high overhead, string lights strung from beam to beam, a soundboard, an opening with a door cut into the wing (in this case, to serve as Malvolio’s prison cell window). This is a collective labor of love. The talents and time of each are donated to a project that has grown alongside its participants with the passage of the years.

None of the actors, directors, or crew are professionals. We donate our time, and most years we are lucky to break even. A few of us acted in high school or college, but many had virtually no drama experience before our first production in the barn (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 2017). Yet—dare I say it—the quality of performance continues to improve and rivals even professional shows. These are not just my own, biased words, but the comments of many audience members. And the numbers speak for themselves: The 2023 season saw a record turnout, with three sold-out shows over a weekend. We don’t advertise at all—all our publicity comes from word of mouth.

Authentic Culture

What draws people to these homespun performances? As I said, the actors aren’t professionals, the stage is small, and the barn has no air conditioning. Yet still, people are drawn to it. In the coming together of family, friends, and strangers to experience a work of art—live, raw, authentic, unpolished—I believe that everyone, both on the stage and off, is able to quench a thirst for truly humane cultural experiences in a society where such experiences have grown scarce.

There is something profoundly real about these shows. If a rainstorm comes—as one did this year—and pelts the tin roof of the barn, some of the dialogue will be drowned out. If an actor forgets lines, there will be an awkward pause. Yet, if anything, these elements only add to the authenticity and intimacy of this artistic and cultural expression in a society so deeply sold out to artificiality, convenience, and slick packaging.

Many of us are starved for culture—and by “culture,” I do not mean the commercial products of pop-culture, homogenous, cheapened, and mass produced on the coasts and sold all over the country to be “consumed” for the profit of the entertainment industry (as though true leisure could ever be compatible with commercial “industry”). Nor do I mean the “high” culture guarded by the connoisseurs, dissected by the critics, catalogued by the institutes and universities. Shakespeare is not for the elite. He belongs to everyone. In his own day, the performances of his works were hardly considered high-brow—they were popular entertainment for people of all classes and professions. To love and understand Shakespeare, you need only be human and willing to raise your gaze to the nobler things of life.

This is not pop culture, nor is it snobbery. What happens for three magical nights each year in a barn settled in a valley between farm fields and forest ridges in Wisconsin is what we might call “authentic folk culture,” ordinary people enjoying art and community and true recreation. Ordinary people producing things of value for one another, rather than passively consuming the solitary stimulation offered by the television or cell phone.

What we are doing is, in some sense, profoundly ordinary. Yet it is precisely the ordinary that has become more and more rare. And just the fact that something is ordinary doesn’t mean it isn’t in some sense exceptional—even sacred.

Recreation has the word “create” in it for a reason. It is not mere consumption, even on the part of the audience in our little theater—one of the joys of live theater is that it is a give-and-take between a living audience and living performers. The audience has a significant role to play—their tears, their laughter, their applause, their attention are what give the whole thing meaning, and the actors on stage respond to it in real-time. No two performances are the same. No two audiences are the same. This is human. For we are not machines, but living, breathing creatures with hearts. And the best of this type of art is always a mutual giving—a giving from the heart.

Friendship and Camaraderie

The best theatrical performances are an exercise in friendship, that “reciprocal goodwill” of Aristotle: actors give of their talents in a remarkably vulnerable way for the enjoyment and edification of the audience, while the audience gives their attention and appreciation to the actors in return. This “theatrical friendship” can take on an even deeper level when actor and audience member know each other outside of the context of the theater. The people on stage in our barn are not Julliard-educated actors—they are the friends and neighbors of many of the audience members, which allows them to bring a special personal touch to their performance—a certain species of love, even.

But even more profound than the relationship between actor and audience is the relationship between actor and actor. Every year, the bonds between actors solidify a little more. Acting with others creates a unique kind of camaraderie—on stage, each actor depends on the others and must come to trust the others to know their part and play their role. Acting your best is a gift not just to the audience but also to your castmates. Everyone has something key to contribute; everyone is essential in coming together to create a beautiful work of art that is bigger than any one person. It is a deeply collaborative process.

Outside of the performances themselves, you spend many hours together in rehearsals. Over time, you come to know the rhythms of one another’s behaviors on and off stage. Your shared experiences in pursuit of a common worthwhile goal deepen your friendship in a way that simply spending undirected time together cannot.

Flourishing

The last line is spoken. The last song sung. I take a deep breath. The triumph of a successful performance floods me.

I see the faces of my fellow actors, and in their eyes, there is more than, perhaps, even Shakespeare could articulate.

We come on stage for bows, linking hands. The applause fades. And we are no longer dukes or pirates, jesters or magicians. This is no longer some faraway part of the globe, but a hay loft. We step off the stage into the crowd of people who were our audience and are our friends.

As I look over this crowd of bright faces congratulating one another under the crisscrossing beams and rows of yellow bulbs, with a diamond moon cutting through the window in the clerestory, near the peak of the barn, I am reminded of the words of Odysseus as he surveys the feast of the Phaeacians in Book 9 of “The Odyssey”:

‘‘Lord Alcinous, my most worshipful prince, it is indeed a lovely thing to hear a bard such as yours, with a voice like the gods’. I myself feel that there is nothing more delightful than when the festive mood reigns in a whole people’s hearts and the banqueters listen to a minstrel from their seats in the hall, while the tables before them are laden with bread and meat, and a steward carries round the wine he has drawn from the bowl and fills their cups. This, to my way of thinking, is something very like perfection.”

If Western civilization is to be saved, it will be saved, in part, by such quiet acts of culture as this, when human beings come together face-to-face to celebrate what we have been given—in our cultural heritage, in our landscapes, in our communities, in each other.

Not unlike fixing up an old barn or putting on an even older play, the work of cultural restoration will be a humble work of many unnoticed people. It will be a collaborative labor of love, with each person performing his or her unique task, adding a piece to the whole, generation after generation, to build something worthwhile. Something joyful. Something lasting. Something luminous.