Summertime Shakespeare

Cherri McKay helps bring the bard to life in annual tradition

In the summer of 1993, CHERRI MCKAY'S eldest son won a role in Cape Fear Shakespeare’s first production in the amphitheater at Greenfield Lake, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At the time, the stage was but a bare, concrete platform, and McKay was a mom helping out wherever she could.

“I got more and more involved with the company every year. And eventually, within a couple years, I was production stage managing every single show and working with every artistic director,” she says. “It eventually became my life from the middle of May until the end of June.”

In 2003, McKay became the artistic director of what is now called Cape Fear Shakespeare on the Green, and this year will be her twenty-first year working with the group – the free, outdoor productions run throughout June (see info below). In that time she’s been involved with over forty Shakespearean productions.

She’s also seen the amphitheater evolve from its rustic beginnings to the more polished place it is today after a renovation in 2009.

“It was a mess for years. Our actors would have to use the old Flintstones-type bathhouses by the lake for dressing rooms. There was a whole weekend devoted to cleaning it out (each year). There would be frogs. Snakes came out one year, little, baby snakes,” she says. “Now we tell the actors who never worked out there then, ‘You don't know how good you have it!'”

Ten years ago, McKay founded the Shakespeare Youth Company, which performs a show each year alongside the adult performance. This year’s youth company show is what she calls a “hippy-dippy” version of As You Like It. The play has been rearranged so the first half takes place in the Palace of Warwickshire and in Elizabethan dress, and the second half is in the Forest of Arden in 1970s attire with music from that era.

McKay is proud of her performers, but she also makes certain they understand what they’re saying.

“If they say it like they’re just reciting it, I’ll stop them, and we’ll go back until I see the light bulb go off. They really are really good,” McKay says.

An advocate of youth theater, McKay created her own umbrella company, Journey Productions, to share that passion with the region’s young people.

“What I tell everyone: try it all. I don’t feel like anybody is better than anybody else with what they do. As long as you love your art and you care about it, then that’s great. And my art is different from your art, and that’s good too because everyone’s enjoying what they’re doing,” she says.

“Being involved in a play gives you the opportunity to maybe reach beyond what your own experiences are and maybe even imagine worlds that are from a different time,” she says. “And I always try to teach them to keep their eyes and ears and mind open. I really believe that working with and through the arts really strengthens one’s virtue and tolerance and sympathy and respect for others.”

On Stage:

Cape Fear Shakespeare on the Green’s Comedy of Errors

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday through June 29, 8 p.m., free

(Additional shows for Actor Appreciation Night on June 19 and 26)

Greenfield Lake Amphitheater

Info: www.facebook.com/shakespeare.green

To view more of photographer Katherine Clark's work, go to www.katherineclarkphotography.com.

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