Creating the Anniversary Gala, Part 2

I named the show The Complete History of Vermont Stage (abridged) as a take-off on a show called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) and also because this evening won't quite cover the complete history of Vermont Stage, but rather the history of Vermont Stage at FlynnSpace (which doesn't include the first 5 years of our existence).

The Complete History of William Shakespeare (abridged) is basically comedic romp in which every one of Shakespeare's 37 plays is performed (or at least mentioned) in about 90 minutes. At Vermont Stage, we've done 36 plays since we moved into FlynnSpace (plus 4 Winter Tales shows), so I figured I could do something similar. I would take famous lines or key plot points from every one of our productions and weave them all together into an evening's entertainment. Or so I thought.

Whereas almost everyone has at least a passing familiarity with most of Shakespeare's plays, and can therefore get most of the references in that other Complete History, a few of our plays are fairly obscure and there are plenty that haven't been seen by most of the evening's audience. Writing such a script would be challenging enough; writing one that would be entertaining to our audience seemed close to impossible.

Well then, I thought, what if I did something a bit more prosaic: make a passing reference to three of the plays each season, and do an actual scene from one play per season. Each show gets a nod, and we get enough of a scene from the best-known play to make sense to the audience. However, when I did the math, I realized that would make the show longer than I was shooting for, and it ultimately didn't feel very interesting.

Then it occurred to me that what I really wanted to do was tell the story of Vermont Stage Company since I had become artistic director. I realized that I could tell it with a combination of narration, pictures from all the shows, and short scenes from some of the key shows, and I would choose scenes that actually echoed the themes of the story I was telling.

But just what was this story I wanted to tell?

August 10th, 2009