GRAND RAPIDS -- Bess Connors showed Joel Stob fireworks of a different color Friday.
The 21-year-old Grand Rapids woman landed a big-league slap across his face as he started on a sexist rant.
"That was very real," said Stob, 23, touching his face and donning a frilly white shirt and a black, tricorne hat.
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The scene played out by director Joan Stob's design. Stob, a former high school English teacher in Elmhurst, Ill., wants to share her passion for Shakespeare with friends and family.
Annual tradition
This is the third year three families have celebrated the Fourth of July with backyard theater. A cast of about a dozen performed "The Taming of the Shrew," complete with a stage depicting an Italian downtown center.
Bess Connors embraced her role as Katherine, the shrew, for a few reasons.
"I'm proud to be typecast," she said. "My leading man is someone in need of abuse."
Stob said she is aware of the irony of celebrating a British playwright on America's birthday.
"It's a very unpatriotic thing to do, don't you think?" she joked.
They are not thumbing their noses at their country, Stob insists. It is simply the best fit for everyone's schedules.
"This is a day which pretty much everybody has off," she said.
Stob assigns roles on the spot, and the cast quickly begins a read-through. Julie Connors, 58, of Grand Rapids, was preordained to be the "lusty widow." Larger parts generally are reserved for the younger players.
"I think I'm ready to move on to something bigger," she quipped.
Costumes come from the Grand Rapids Ballet Company, of which Nick Schultz, 23, and his fiancee, Laura McQueen, 26, are members.
Joey Schultz, 19, said he is not ashamed to throw on a pair of tights and play the lute.
"I've got ballet dancers as brothers, and I've done ballet," he said. "Tights are not an issue."
A learning experience
The tradition unofficially began when the families' children were in boys' choir together. They planned a visit to England.
Such a trip surely would be for naught without catching a play in Shakespeare's native Stratford-on-Avon, the moms decided. So to prepare, they ran through "The Tempest" -- in costume -- with the boys playing female leads. Perfectly normal in Shakespearean theater, Stob pointed out.
Other performances have been held as the families have vacationed together at SpringHill Christian camps.
"You learn a lot," said Nick's mom, Liz Schultz, 50, of Grand Rapids. "You feel like when you go and see (a Shakespeare play), you really know those characters."
Abbreviated versions are becoming the new tradition, Schultz said. Last year's production of "Romeo and Juliet" cut into fireworks time.
"The play went on so long that it got dark and we had to light the tiki torches just to see the script," Schultz said.
One of her sons, David Schultz, bowed out of this year's pageantry, beckoned, instead, by the Rothbury music festival.
His move leaves mom befuddled.
"He could be learning about the human condition, but he's going to see Rothbury," Schultz said.
- The Grand Rapids Press - 7/5/08
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