The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company enjoys telling people its production of Much Ado About Nothing is in ruins.
Those ruins belong to Patapsco Female Institute in Ellicott City, and company members say the remaining walls of the 19th-century school for girls are a great setting for a fresh, energetic and entertaining production of Much Ado About Nothing.
"People forget Shakespeare wrote plays to make money," said actor Nathan Thomas, of Reading, Pa. "It wasn't intended to be like eating spinach."
Much Ado is the company's second production at the institute - now a Howard County historic park - and runs weekends, starting tomorrow through July 11. The lighter atmosphere begins with outdoor seating on blankets and chairs arrayed on a lawn.
Staging the play outdoors "eliminates some of the stuffiness," said Ian Gallanar, the show's director.
He said people are welcome to bring food and drinks or to buy them at the site.
To give the audience a more modern connection with Elizabethan theater, the company has set the play in the American South in the 1840s. Gallanar, the company's artistic director, said the that time period will highlight themes such as women's roles in society and the power they do and do not have.
In the play, Beatrice and Benedick engage in a battle of wits and claim to hate one another even as they fall in love, while the courtship of Claudio and Hero is interrupted by the scheming of the troublesome Don John.
The antebellum setting will also tie in with the institute, which provides a backdrop and makes up part of the set.
The set designers are not allowed to attach anything to the historic building's walls, so they built a stage in one corner of the building that accommodates several of the institute's stone steps.
A balcony stands against one of the institute walls in front of an upper-story window.
To make the evening more of an event, the company will begin with a stage combat demonstration, a production of Fifteen Minute Hamlet, written by Tom Stoppard, and on several nights a musical performance of Victorian-era songs by the a cappella group Larksong.
Tours of the institute will be available.
The actors said they are enjoying the location, as well.
"A benefit [of working outdoors] is you are more free," said Thomas, who plays Friar Francis.
An actor's job is to fill the space, he said, and the outdoors offers lots of space.
