Staging Shakespeare in the vineyard: Valley Players bring a sold-out, storm-tossed ‘The Tempest’ to Hatfield

It was an otherwise cool and pleasant Thursday evening in Amherst, but inside Room 101 at the Bangs Community Center, a simulated storm repeatedly threw a half-dozen sailors across a ship’s deck. As the vessel neared a wreck, tempers flared. One man shouted at the boatswain, calling him a “bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog,” while another labeled him a “whoreson, insolent noisemaker!” A theatrical wave crashed moments later, sending one sailor to the floor and leaving another doubled over, clutching his stomach in pain.

“Storms are a lot of work,” said Ronit Schorr, who plays Stephano.

That hard work has already paid off, as ticket demand has completely exhausted the box office. Valley Players will present its fully sold-out production of William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” at Black Birch Vineyard in Hatfield on June 11-12 and 19-20 at 6:30 p.m., and on Sunday, June 21 at 5:30 p.m. A single, equally sold-out indoor performance is also scheduled at 33 Hawley in Northampton on Saturday, June 13 at 4:30 p.m.

For lucky ticket holders, the performances at Black Birch will be outdoors, and guests are encouraged to bring their own blankets, low seating and picnic dinners, though pizza, wine and other beverages will be available to purchase on-site. If it rains, the show will move indoors with seating provided.

“I think it’s just so beautiful with the language, with the outdoors, with the evening, the costumes. Shakespeare is a smorgasbord of delight, and you can go so many directions with it,” said director Jill Franks.

“The Tempest” is the story of Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, who lives on an island with his teenage daughter Miranda, and their servants Ariel and Caliban. The aforementioned shipwreck — which Prospero created with magic — brings their island a number of new inhabitants, including Alonso, the king of Naples; Ferdinand, Alonso’s son, who falls in love with Miranda; the jester Trinculo; and the butler Stephano.

Valley Players donates half of its net ticket proceeds from every production to a local organization tied to the show’s central themes. For this performance, they are partnering with the Northampton-based Center for New Americans, a nonprofit providing education, career assistance and legal support for immigrants, refugees and migrants. The thematic connection is that not only do the shipwrecked crew members in “The Tempest” find themselves displaced, but the play actively wrestles with colonialism. Long before Prospero arrives to claim the island and enslave its inhabitants, Caliban and Ariel called it home.

In the play’s first act, Caliban curses himself for having shown Prospero “all the qualities o’ th’ isle, the fresh springs, brine pits, barren place and fertile” when Prospero first taught him language. Because of that early trust, Caliban is now trapped. Though Caliban once ruled his domain, Prospero’s magic now confines him “in this hard rock,” keeping the rest of the island completely out of reach.

“At the end, the play leaves so many questions open, and key to those is, what’s going to happen to Caliban and Ariel? … That’s a big question in post-colonialism: you give the inhabitants the new identity, but they have their old identity, and when they claim independence, they want to reclaim their old identity, but they’ve been changed very much by the influence of the colonizers,” Franks said.

This production also happens to be the company’s first time staging a Shakespeare play. At the rehearsal visited by the Gazette, Franks noted the actors were “on fire,” adding that “Shakespeare, to me, is the one that can give the opportunity for that kind of huge acting.” The expansive style unfolds not just through the elevated text, but through moments of slapstick and physical comedy.

What Franks wants audiences to take away from this show is that Shakespeare’s work “is easier to get than they might have thought.”

“When an actor is on fire and looking at the audience” — something Franks has her actors do often in this production — “that audience member cannot help but take it in, because that gaze engages them totally in the action,” she said.

“I hope that they really enjoy lying on a picnic blanket or sitting on a low chair and having wine and [a] picnic,” she added. “It’s all your senses being filled at once.”

The show is about two and a half hours long, including one 15-minute intermission. For more information about Valley Players, visit valleyplayers.org.