Over spring break, the Rude Mechanicals –– Dartmouth’s student-run Shakespeare company –– performed “The Comedy of Errors” across the Upper Valley in their first ever tour. The group also ran workshops with seven middle and high schools in the Upper Valley and greater Vermont area.
Not only was the tour a first for the group, but the show was Luke Gerdeman ’27’s first time directing a play as well. He said that he was inspired to tour because of his own experience seeing a company’s 90-minute version of Hamlet at his high school.
“The Comedy of Errors” was a unique pitch for the group because it was proposed as a tour. According to Aleksa Sotirov ’26 who played two roles, the idea of going on a tour had been circulating for five or six years, but “it just never logistically could happen.”
Eleven company members participated. According to cast member Lucia Hartray ’27, the group stayed in interim housing for most of the spring break. They typically performed a show or two a day –– and then led a workshop in which cast members would coach kids through scenes.
When asked about choosing “The Comedy of Errors,” one of Shakespeare’s earliest works, Gerdeman said that he found it particularly conducive to the “abridged format” needed to tour. He was able to cut it down to a 75-minute production.
Gerdeman said that “The Comedy of Errors” was well-suited to his vision of a show based on the “80s and 90s sitcoms” he “loved as a child. He thought that the play’s comedic quality –– as opposed to the more complex plotlines and character development in Shakespeare’s other works –– would translate well to young audiences who might not have seriously interacted with Shakespeare before.
“When I was a kid watching the TV that my parents watched, I didn’t understand everything that was happening, but I knew it was funny and I had a good time with it,” Gerdeman said. “So [I had] the same [idea] for this.”
Indeed, Sotirov described “The Comedy of Errors” as “sitcom Shakespeare.” It stars two twins –– Antipholus and Dromio –– who are separated at birth, grow up with other ‘twin’ brothers, get mistaken for their other twins and marry.
According to current company manager and tour production manager Lilla Bozek ’27, “The Comedy of Errors” was also a good choice because its props could easily be packed in a car and the settings are adaptable to different spaces.
Sotirov recalled an unusual stage at one school that was essentially a “huge rectangle just cut out of the floor,” so the audience watched the actors from above. There, he said, in a spontaneous moment of ad-libbing, one lead actor amusingly “grunted” while dragging his bag of money up the stairs leading to the stage.
As the director, Gerdeman also said that he “wanted the [actors] to play directly to the crowd.” After some scenes, a character played by Hartray would “look to the audience and just shrug,” and there were “a lot of references to the audience.” One of Sotirov’s characters even did a costume change on stage.
As for the workshops, Gerdeman said that although not part of his original pitch, they were something he had been “interested in” and that was discussed in early meetings.
Ultimately, he said he “sort of gave [Sotirov] free reign” over designing them. For his part, Sotirov said that he was excited about the idea of working with kids from the start.
Reflecting the general diversity of the Rude Mechs’ backgrounds and approaches to Shakespeare, Sotirov added, “I think I am one of the people who is more interested sort of the technical side of Shakespeare … in terms of text and verse.”
Sotirov said that he had partly modeled the workshops after one that someone from the London Academy of Musical and Dramatic Arts had run at Dartmouth last fall. He also said that he was inspired by “the way we [as a company] do auditions,” which involves splitting people into groups and having them “cold-read scenes.”
All of the interviewees emphasized that the small cast size and nature of the tour produced a great sense of camaraderie with some standout moments.
Bozek spoke fondly of the cooked “group dinners” that ended up being a great opportunity for both “bonding” and “mentorship” between younger and older company members.
Prior to the actual tour, Bozek recalled one night when the cast presented an “informal performance” at the college for friends when they “weren’t all fully off book.”
“That moment sort of dissipated –– for me at least –– a lot of that anxiety [about the tour] and sort of recentered me,” Bozek recalled. “It made me remember that one of the points of this is for us to have fun and share our art with people, which really isn’t scary or high stakes at all.”
Sotirov also mentioned “the time we accidentally stole a stole from a church.”
“Our premiere was in the church, and one of my characters is a priest, and we’d sort of piled our props on top of this little pit,” he said, explaining that someone had later mistakenly packed one of the church stoles along with the props.
Both Sotirov and Bozek also highlighted their guided visit to the local library in Craftsbury, Vt. that used to be the rehearsal site of a Shakespeare troupe –– the largest in the area at the time.
Both also mentioned one performance where the audience was around 300 middle schoolers: the largest the Rude Mechs has ever had.According to Sotirov, the front row contained “these middle school boys [who looked like they] really didn’t want to be there.” Bozek described a “pit of dread” in their stomach worrying about the tough crowd.
“And then something happened –– I’m not sure what –– but by the end of the play, the kids were just riotously laughing,” said Sotirov.
Bozek recalled a moment shortly after when “Dromio has this rope out … and [the boys were] like, ‘Yeah, Dromio, you have that rope!’” They describe how, as someone who found Shakespeare daunting at first, this moment was powerful.
“In that moment…I just ha[d] a really deep appreciation for the accessibility of art and a gratefulness to be able to take this funding from Dartmouth and bring this art to children who never would have been able to experience it due to socioeconomic barriers –– but [also] are really gaining something from it,” Bozek said.