Theater RED blends Shakespeare and Scheherazade in official debut

They say you only get one chance to make a first impression. Theater RED technically made theirs in January with a production of Twelfth Night that utilized the “unrehearsed” method co-founder Christopher Elst learned several years before and has reprised three more times with different plays this year.

But this week, he and Marcee Doherty-Elst (his co-founder/spouse) get to subvert that old adage and make that first impression all over again, with A Thousand Times Goodnight: their first fully produced play, a world premiere written by Jared McDaris in the fashion of Shakespeare’s original works.

McDaris’ play is an adaptation of the Arabian Nights, the famous collection of Middle Eastern folk tales. Its main plot is the frame story that bookends the volume, in which the heroine Scheherazade volunteers as the latest bride of a betrayed sultan who kills his wives the morning after their wedding to ensure their sexual fidelity.  But like Scheherazade, A Thousand Times Goodnight doesn’t just tell one tale. It also offers audiences three plays-within-a-play: the stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sinbad.

“When people see Midsummer Night’s Dream, in most productions, some stuff is funny, but really they’re waiting for Pyramus and Thisbe [Midsummer’s play-within-a-play],” McDaris said. “So I wanted to write something that had more than one.” He picked the three most familiar to Western audiences, giving each a different twist – “Aladdin” is a spectacle-driven story, “Ali Baba” is a mix of musicality and slapstick comedy and “Sinbad” – a deliberately altered version that has significant plot purposes – is about the absence of spectacle.

McDaris says he was inspired to write A Thousand Times Goodnight in response to Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, a play he says is often mischaracterized by modern productions. “People always try and turn Taming of the Shrew into a ‘Battle of the Sexes’ or a commentary on feminism, and it’s just not written that way,” McDaris said. “I guess they want to ‘justify’ that character, but the reason she’s like that is because she’s a female stereotype written by a misogynist, or at least for misogynist crowds. So this is the flip side of that.”

Of course, McDaris didn’t have to stick with Shakespeare’s style, but he says not doing so might have resulted in a worse finished play. “I think people often try to create experimental theater that’s evocative of older styles, Elizabethan or Greek. And the language almost always sounds very clumsy and formal and uninvested,” McDaris said. “I really like verse. I like watching Elizabethan plays and I enjoy the ambiance of them, but it’s the beauty of the language that I appreciate.”

In addition to having a different subject matter than anything else in the Elizabethan canon, A Thousand Times Goodnight also makes use of considerably more female characters than would have been done in Shakespeare’s day. There’s Scheherazade (Amanda Carson), of course, but McDaris also included her often-forgotten sister Dinyzade (Natasha Kaye) and a female Clown (Brittany Rae Bonnell) to complement the play’s other lead roles, the Sultan (James Carrington) and his vizier Jafar (Matt Roth), the girls’ father.

That difference helped convince the Elsts to choose A Thousand Times Goodnight for their first full production. “There are so many wonderful female actors in this town, and there are just not the  same opportunities or as many opportunities,” Doherty-Elst said. “So what attracted us to this show – among other things, because it’s wonderful – is that it has a lot of really strong female roles and the ability to cast some of these roles gender-blind. … It’s such a great opportunity to provide female actors here in town an opportunity for some really strong, interesting roles that are challenging and fun.”

But they didn’t just pick the show for its casting benefits. As Elst puts it: “I wouldn’t have chosen it as our first [fully-staged production] if it wasn’t the best script I’ve read in years.”

Theater RED’s staging of A Thousand Times Goodnight is as ambitious as its script. They’ve draped Sunset Playhouse’s Studio Theatre, including the audience’s seats, in a Moroccan-style tent (designed by Christopher Dunham); lit the room with hand-painted lanterns (and more traditional lightwork by Ross Zentner); created ornate Elizabethan-meets-Arabian costumes (designed by Liz Shipe); hired a quartet of dancers; and commissioned original music by Trevor Watkin. “We wanted a theater with a sensational, magical, otherworldly feel,” Doherty-Elst said. “It’s no small feat to do that in that multipurpose room. It’s been challenging, but rewarding and fun.”

To fund that ambition, they turned to an increasingly common source: Kickstarter. But it’s in this endeavor that Theater RED has perhaps made its best first impression. Rather than simply use Kickstarter as an alternate method to collect donation, they used it to pre-sell the show, offering reduced prices and extra benefits, from online shout-outs and finger puppets to personalized sonnets and the “Sultan’s Seats” – special onstage seating that puts you in the middle of the performance. Elst says the extended offers were a way to do more for Kickstarter backers than many groups have done since the site exploded in popularity. “Marcee and I talked at length about how we can offer a different experience if you’re a Kickstarter backer, what we can do. … We said, if we’re going to do this, and ask for people’s money, we have to make it worth their while. Make it special.”

Now that the moment of the show has come, all three are excited to see their collective work fully staged, pushing thoughts of next year mostly out of their head – although Elst suggests their current, subject-to-change game plan is titled “Revenge of Theater RED,” a season of revenge plays. For now, they simply hope A Thousand Times Goodnight brings the hometown audience they believe it deserves.

“No one in Milwaukee has seen anything like this,” Doherty-Elst said. “People talk a lot about supporting local theater, supporting small theater, supporting local playwrights. Well, this is a world premiere. A guy here in Wauwatosa, who lives over there, wrote this. Come check it out.”

Theater RED’s world-premiere production of A Thousand Times Goodnight opens Thursday, Nov. 7 and runs through Nov. 16. Performances are Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. at Sunset Playhouse’s Studio Theatre; tickets are $15 and can be purchased online.