Tabor to perform Comedy of Errors this weekend
Staff writer
This weekend, Hillsboro will be filled with alumni, family, and friends as Tabor College celebrates homecoming. Along with the football game and alumni dinner, Tabor will also perform William Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors.”
Juniors Molly Wiebe, who will play Dromio of Syracuse, and Reuven Isaac, who will play Antipholus of Syracuse, both have never performed a full Shakespeare play before, but want the audience to know that it’s not dramatic Shakespeare.
“It’s funny,” Wiebe said. “The storyline is all twisted and mixed up and then everything gets solved in the end.”
“It’s easier to understand than I thought it would be,” Isaac said. “I went into it thinking it would take me a long time to really understand what my character was saying, what the others were saying, but it came surprisingly easy surprisingly fast.”
Since this is their first time performing a full Shakespeare play, the journey from read through to performance has been different.
“I can’t speak for everybody, but it’s just so different from how we talk day to day, so it’s a little harder to find the rhythm or the music in the lines,” Isaac said, “Memorization was difficult for me, but it’s absolutely hilarious and remembering the jokes and how they’re delivered helped with the memorization.”
Wiebe agreed, saying that memorization was key for pulling off Shakespeare.
“In any show you want to memorize your lines verbatim, but since Shakespeare writes in iambic trimeter, if you mess up one word it can throw the entire rhythm off,” Wiebe said, “so it makes it important that you memorize it word for word.”
One unique aspect of the play, Wiebe said, was the number of new people in the cast.
“Freshman or transfers or maybe people who have been at Tabor but never participated in the fall show before,” Wiebe said. “The past few shows Reuven and I have been in have been smaller casts but this one is bigger.”
“It’s also interesting to see of these newer people to watch them grow and see where they were at the beginning to where they are now, and even in these last two dress rehearsals where they will go,” Isaac added. “I think it’s fascinating.”
Along with the larger cast comes adding a more personal flair to the production.
“Rehearsal processes have allowed for each individual cast members’ flavors to be infused into the show,” Wiebe said. “We use all sorts of different types of style and different comedy. I think it’s safe to say that everyone has contributed to that.”
What Wiebe and Isaac hope the audience takes away from the play this weekend is a fun, memorable experience.
“And to change their mindset a bit about Shakespeare,” Isaac said. “It can be funny and fun and you can understand it and it can be entertaining.”
Last modified Oct. 20, 2016