When Jeff Cole got the call from James Ricks, producing artistic director at Richmond Shakespeare, about being involved in this year’s Bootleg Shakespeare event, he was excited.
“I told him, dude, you know I’m always interested in Bootleg,” remembers Cole. “It’s the most fun I’ve ever had as an actor.”
When Ricks clarified that he wanted Cole to direct the production this year, Cole paused for only a second. “It’s a bit of a different conversation,” he says. “But I told him that I was certainly up for whatever lunacy they could send my way.”
Bootleg Shakespeare, a one-night only, free performance of one of the Bard’s plays, has become a foundational component of Richmond Shakespeare’s offerings since the company first presented the event in 2009. Professional actors are cast 30 days before the event but they don’t rehearse until the day of the performance.
Working on their own to learn their lines, develop their characters and assemble their own props and costumes, cast members assemble to create a performance that may teeter on the edge of going off the rails at any moment.
Cole has been involved in every Bootleg since the first, usually as an actor but he also directed the first post-pandemic event in 2022. He says that some actors find the experience intoxicating.
“We have several actors this year who have done it before and they’ve totally caught the bug,” Cole says. “You have to be pretty fearless and just go out there and trust yourself and your fellow actors. You have to think, ‘we’re going to have this conversation for real because we haven’t rehearsed it all’ and you have to be open to that.
“Some actors end up saying ‘that was the worst experience of my life and I’m never doing that again,’ and God bless them, I get it.”
This year’s Bootleg will be a performance of “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” one of Ricks’s favorites. “It’s in my top five of Shakespeare’s plays,” he says. “It’s a little unusual, but it has some of the most detailed and carefully drawn characters of all of his plays. I think it’s perfect for Bootleg.”
The show’s plot involves the leader of a Basque region in Spain, the King of Navarre, who has decreed that no woman should come within a mile of his court for three years while the Lords of the land undertake a rigorous regimen of study and fasting. Hijinks ensue when the Princess of France arrives along with a coterie of noble Ladies, with whom the noblemen are all soon besmitten.
“What strikes me most about this play is that it’s like ‘Seinfeld,’” says Cole. “It’s kind of a play about nothing; there’s no war, there’s no villain. It’s a lot of smart people talking about how smart they are. So it’s very funny and the language is absolutely lovely.”
Cole says audience members often react to the Bootleg experience the same way actors do. “People come in and there’s this almost circus-like environment,” he says. “And it’s just like with the actors: you either really get the concept and love every second of it or you’re horrified because it’s not your idea of what a Shakespeare show should be.”
According to Ricks, the concept hasn’t needed to be tweaked because every performance is totally different. “It only happens once a year,” he says, “so I don’t know that the exercise becomes old or stale. And audiences are complicit in the exercise; they know that at any moment there could be a train wreck.
“And there’s no other theater.experience I can think of where an audience rewards a train wreck with applause and love and affection the way that I’ve seen at a Bootleg.”
“Bootleg Shakespeare: Love’s Labor’s Lost” is free and will be performed on Saturday, May 4 at 7:30 p.m. at Dominion Energy Center’s Gottwald Playhouse, 600 East Grace St. Tickets are released at 6pm at the playhouse box office. Arrive early to ensure your spot as there will be a line around the block.
