LAKEPORT — On Sunday afternoon, after nine weeks of casting, set building and rehearsing, director John Tomlinson was getting ready for New Vintage Productions” performance of “Romeo and Juliet” at the Soper-Reese Community Theatre for the first full-scale Shakespearean play in Lake County in 30 years.
Nearly 40 audience members were in attendance at the theater, which seats 250, but backstage was standing room only. The 29 actors in Elizabethan costume were packed sword-to-sheath in the green room, getting last-minute direction from Tomlinson on the proper way to cheer during a party scene.
“I know it”s hard because you”re not sure when to come down, but you need to give a huge huzzah,” Tomlinson said.
“Huzzah!” the actors answered.
The ages of the assembled cast varied almost as much as their height, costume and character. Adam Painchaud, 19, a bass-playing graduate from Lower Lake High School, plays the male lead role of Romeo. Romeo”s father, Lord Montague, is played by Jon Zarr Haber, a former graphic designer for Disney.
Mellany Watson, a high school senior and champion of Middletown High School”s monologue competition, played Juliet. In fact, 20 of the actors gathered in the green room ? which is actually painted cake-batter yellow ? are younger than 20, something Tomlinson prides himself on, according to Barbara Clark, marketing manager of New Vintage Productions.
“I really like the fact that John and I share a passion for working with the youth,” Clark said.
Clark and Tomlinson are two-thirds of the team behind New Vintage Productions, an entertainment company they created in the summer of 2010 with fellow theater enthusiast Claudia Listman.
Tomlinson, whose resum? includes a bachelor”s degree in theatre arts from Chico State and an M.F.A. from Roosevelt University, met Clark, his future business partner and girlfriend, when he moved to Lake County from Chicago in 2007.
Clark was playing Tzeitel in the Lake County Repertory Theater Production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Tomlinson, new in town, was asked to fill in for the actor playing Motel, Tzeitel”s husband. He refused the role, but after seeing Clark perform, he regretted it, and told her so at the cast party.
From there, the two hit it off and are now working together on the second-biggest romantic project of their lives.
“John originally told me that when we started doing ?Romeo and Juliet” that it was the first time he was in love,” Clark said.
“A lot of people are like, ?that”s romantic … they all die,”” she said. “But the thing about love is that it”s crazy. You might not think straight, but you know it”s true and real,”
But love, like theater, is work. Among the challenges Tomlinson and his crew had to face was constructing a stage-sized wooden set, complete with a textured gray staircase and an ivy-covered balcony. He had to direct a high-energy cast of teenagers, many of whom already had acting experience. And he had to sell the idea of putting on a Shakespearean tragedy to the Soper-Reese managers, who warned him that it was a commercial risk.
Still, Clark and Tomlinson think the benefits of Shakespeare outweigh the risks.
“Romeo and Juliet is the cornerstone of dramatic learning in America,” Tomlinson said.
“We have to enrich the culture in Lake County,” Clark said.
The benefits of Shakespeare are evident in the young cast, all of whom can quote and translate their lines on command. Because the centuries-old dialect of Elizabethan English is hard to understand, Tomlinson had a linguist come work with the actors on understanding their lines.
“It”s our job to make the audience understand with our words and movements,” said Kori Jeanne Jones, an 18-year-old woman who said she has no problem playing the male role of Mercutio.
Most of the young cast found it difficult at first not to read their lines in an English accent, but eventually got used to delivering them normally. Several actors relied on their families to help them with their lines, including Painchaud, who convinced his 16-year-old brother to read Juliet”s parts.
“He was really good,” Painchaud said.
The week before the first performance was frantic, according to Painchaud, who worked for hours perfecting his lines and the choreography of his fight scenes. “I”ve pretty much been living here,” he said.
Painchaud and the rest of the cast left the green room in a chorus of enthusiastic “huzzahs” and cheering. Before the show started, Tomlinson took the stage to address the audience, which was comprised mostly of family and friends of the cast and crew.
“To those select few who have made it here, count yourself among the chosen,” Tomlinson said.
He went on to describe how a labor of love like “Romeo and Juliet” comes together.
“It starts with an idea. It starts with a journey and motion, and of course, we learn as we go,” Tomlinson said.
“Romeo and Juliet” will be performed at the Soper-Reese Community Theatre at 275 S. Main St. in Lakeport Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. For more information, call New Vintage Productions at 355-2211.
