By Chip Chandler — Producer
Texas cast members are taking on a bloody difficult summer challenge beyond staging an outdoor musical six nights a week.
Fourteen company members (plus lead Michael Hoy, a recent West Texas A&M University grad) will stage William Shakespeare's historical drama Richard III on two consecutive Mondays, the only night Texas is not staged.
Director Andrew Barratt Lewis has cut down the play (Shakespeare's second-longest, behind Hamlet) significantly and kept his cast small, but since rehearsals only began June 3, the process is fast and furious, as you see in the embedded video.
"We've just talked a lot about who are these people? What is the family tree that is going on, and trying to help the actors understand all of that history so that they can then put it into the very brief rehearsal period that we have," director Andrew Barratt Lewis said.
Richard III will be staged at 8:30 p.m. Monday and June 25 in the courtyard at Pioneer Amphitheatre inside Palo Duro Canyon State Park.
Tickets are $10.
Call 806-655-2181.
Chip Chandler is a producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and on Facebook.
