The Bard is Back in the Rivertowns with ISC’s “Acting Shakespeare”

By: Sue Treiman

If all the world’s a stage, why not have the play­ers per­form in Irv­ing­ton?

That ques­tion last year in­spired Irv­ing­ton na­tive Kam­ran Saliani, 27, to launch the River­towns’ first and only lo­cal the­ater troupe de­voted to the works of William Shake­speare. Now, the fledg­ling Irv­ing­ton Shake­speare Com­pany (ISC) is poised to bring its sec­ond ma­jor pro­duc­tion, Act­ing Shake­speare, to lo­cal au­di­ences.

“The idea came dur­ing a mo­ment of clar­ity, when I looked around and re­al­ized how much a part of this vil­lage I was. Why, in­stead of per­form­ing in the city, like most am­bi­tious ac­tors, could­n’t I bring Shake­speare to my own town?” asked Saliani.

A work­ing ac­tor and alum­nus of New York Uni­ver­si­ty’s grad­u­ate the­ater pro­gram, Saliani as­sem­bled fel­low act­ing pro­fes­sion­als and for­mer class­mates, won the bless­ing of Irv­ing­ton of­fi­cials and the­ater buffs and mounted the group’s ini­tial pro­duc­tion last sum­mer. Their de­but stag­ing of William Shake­speare’s Twelfth Night at Irv­ing­ton’s O’Hare Na­ture Cen­ter earned praise, pa­trons and a part­ner­ship with the Irv­ing­ton The­ater. Fol­low­ing that suc­cess, IFC pro­duced an al­bum of orig­i­nal mu­sic from the show, sched­uled sev­eral smaller per­for­mances, and started look­ing for fu­ture pro­jects.

That’s when Saliani found a 1982 PBS tap­ing of a one-man show penned and per­formed by cel­e­brated British ac­tor Sir Ian McK­ellen. Act­ing Shake­speare in­ter­spersed some of the bard’s best-known mono­logues with McK­el­len’s per­sonal re­flec­tions on act­ing, ex­pla­na­tions, and a smat­ter­ing of com­edy. The New York Times hailed the blend as a ‘dis­tinc­tive the­atri­cal ex­per­i­ment.” And Saliani found it gal­va­niz­ing. “It was lit­er­ally the most breath­tak­ing per­for­mance I’d ever seen. I knew we had to do it,” he re­called.

Through mu­tual con­nec­tions, Saliani ap­proached Sir Ian for per­mis­sion to adapt his show and re­ceived a ring­ing en­dorse­ment. “He wrote a state­ment of sup­port, gave us his bless­ing, and said we could take the show and re­vive it, which was amaz­ing,” said Saliani.

The troupe did just that, re-en­vi­sion­ing the 90-minute one-man script for four play­ers. Join­ing Saliani (as Third Player/​Pro­ducer), who pre­vi­ously played Malvo­lio in Twelfth Night, are; Sage New­man (as Fourth Player) who has ap­peared in A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream; Kat Quiñones (as Sec­ond Player) a Ma­maro­neck na­tive who acted in IFC’s Twelfth Night; and Jack Saleeby (as First Player), a vet­eran of tour­ing and re­gional com­pa­nies through­out the U.S.

“Each ac­tor was tasked with tak­ing Shake­speare mono­logues (and one son­net!), as well as his­tor­i­cal anec­dotes, per­sonal con­nec­tions, and so on, com­bin­ing all of those el­e­ments and end­ing up with a beau­ti­ful show full of unique range and ex­cit­ing choices,” said Saliani.

True to the new com­pa­ny’s pledge to place in­clu­sive­ness at its cen­ter, the per­for­mance takes a gen­der-queer per­spec­tive on Shake­speare’s works. “All the char­ac­ters have been cast with­out the lim­i­ta­tions and bar­ri­ers that gen­der-roles would pos­si­bly cre­ate for an ac­tor,” said Saliani.

Saliani dis­tin­guished him­self as a stu­dent ac­tor in Irv­ing­ton be­fore pur­su­ing the craft in col­lege. As a mas­ter’s de­gree can­di­date at NYU, he was nat­u­rally drawn by Shake­speare’s ge­nius. But it was­n’t un­til he faced the iso­la­tion of the pan­demic that he ap­pre­ci­ated the truly en­dur­ing power of the bard’s words. “Shake­speare writes specif­i­cally about what it is to be­come a hu­man be­ing, and what mo­ti­vates peo­ple. And dur­ing the pan­demic, I found that his writ­ing helped me feel so much bet­ter about the world we live in,” said Saliani.

In his quest to bring Shake­speare home to the River­towns, he found a kin­dred spirit in Irv­ing­ton Town Hall The­ater Di­rec­tor Greg Allen. IFC now joins the Clock­tower Play­ers, Broad­way Train­ing Cen­ter, Com­mon Ground Con­certs, and River’s Edge The­atre Co. as lo­cal the­atri­cal part­ners. “ISC fills a nice void by shar­ing Shake­speare while rein­vent­ing it for to­day’s au­di­ences,” said Allen.

ISC play­ers them­selves see this as the start of a long, thriv­ing re­la­tion­ship with the vil­lage. “To be able to bring Shake­speare to the place I feel most con­nected to? It’s just the most re­ward­ing thing I can do with my life,” said Saliani.

“The point of this com­pany is to un­lock Shake­speare and re­work our re­la­tion­ship to him,” he added, “So, we’re all des­per­ate to re-en­gage folks. And we also strongly en­cour­age those who aren’t fa­mil­iar with his works or con­flicted about Shake­speare to at­tend.”

Act­ing Shake­speare will be per­formed at the Lec­ture Hall on Mercy Col­lege’s Dobbs Ferry cam­pus, lo­cated at 555 Broad­way, be­gin­ning on March 22nd, re­lo­cated from Irv­ing­ton due to on­go­ing ren­o­va­tions at the Irv­ing­ton The­ater. The show de­buts with two pre­views on March 22nd and 23rd — with March 24th through the 27th as the of­fi­cial run. All per­for­mances be­gin at 7:00 p.m., with am­ple park­ing avail­able on the Mercy cam­pus.

Tick­ets for the gen­eral pub­lic range from $10-$15 and must be pur­chased in ad­vance at irv­ing­tonthe­ater.com/​act­ing­shake­speare. Ad­mis­sion is free for the col­lege’s stu­dents and staff.  As of now, masks and proof of vac­ci­na­tion will be re­quired.

For more in­for­ma­tion about the Irv­ing­ton Shake­speare Com­pany, visit: https://​irvshake­speare.org/