On Sunday afternoon, Theater Alaska concluded a weekend of performances of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” at the Treadwell Mine Office Building. In the next two weeks, the play will be moving to a variety of locations around Juneau.
Enrique Bravo and Flordelino Lagundino are among the founding members of Theater Alaska. They met this production’s director, Matt Huff, while they were attending the theater Masters in Fine Arts program at the University of Texas, where Bravo first played Benedick. Twenty years later, Bravo is returning to the role for the production in Juneau.
Compared to the elaborate set created for his first rendition of Benedick, the abandoned mine building provided a simple canvas.
“That’s what’s kind of cool about theater in general, you just strip it down to the bare stuff, costumes and minimal lights, and the story is still just as powerful,” Bravo said.
Enrique Bravo performs as Benedick during a tech rehearsal of “Much Ado About Nothing.” (Courtesy of Flordelino Lagundino)
Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” takes place in Messina, Italy. In the famous comedy, playful and villainous schemes create and warp romantic ties for a group of soldiers recently returned from war.
Huff and costume designer Corina Chase dressed the characters in the high-waisted trousers, monochrome moss green soldiers’ uniforms, and colorful shirtwaist dresses characteristic of the 1940s, reimagining the play’s post-war setting.
The audience sat around the stage area in camping and folding chairs they brought themselves, bundled in the warm clothes required for rainy Southeast Alaska evenings. Actors entered the stage through the audience or open windows, shoulders wet, filling the empty building with the playful spirit of the Shakespearean comedy. As outdoor recreators passed by on the surrounding trails, they could hear the laughter and music emitted from the woodland venue.
Theater Alaska was started in 2020 with the goal of making theater publicly accessible. Though the actors are paid, tickets are pay-as-you-wish.
“We started five years ago to bring theater that was meaningful to us into the community,” said Lagundino, Theater Alaska’s producing artistic director. “So rather than asking community come to us, we want to go to spaces that they usually go to.”
The company’s approach to Shakespeare also prizes accessibility. The actors worked with vocal coach Thom Jones to make the early modern English of Shakespeare clear for today’s audience.
Company members hoped “Much Ado About Nothing” would both provide a comedic break from current political tensions, while also revealing its serious and relevant undercurrent to the audience.
“In this play, there’s a lot of dramatic tension that happens, there are differences,” Lagundino said. “Beatrice and Benedict, they are at odds with each other, and then they learn to love each other at the end. I think it’s a great kind of message, right now, in terms of this world that we live in, right? So how do we get past differences and learn to see each other fully?”
Natalia Spengler performs as Beatrice during a tech rehearsal of “Much Ado About Nothing.” Anna Becknell as Hero sits in the window behind her. (Courtesy of Flordelino Lagundino)
Natalia Spengler, who grew up in Juneau and has been acting with Theater Alaska since 2021, reflected on her role as Beatrice, a woman who initially prefers witty repartee to the prospect of marriage.
“She has great capacity for love, but she’s also been hurt so much in the past that she has put up a wall around her heart,” Spengler said. “And you get to watch her break that down over the course of the play, and she feels every emotion in the book throughout the course of the play, which is a really great challenge and great treat.”
The production is the result of a collaboration between longtime Juneauites and visitors.
“For me, this is what I’ve enjoyed the most about this production, because half the people in the production I hadn’t worked with before, as far as acting-wise, so it was a lot of new people,” Bravo said. “That’s what this is all about.”
Anna Becknell is a rising senior at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia, where Huff serves as the theater program coordinator. She traveled to Juneau for the first time to be a part of the play. She said that performing on a nontraditional stage is a new challenge.
“It’s a really good lesson that I needed to learn about flexibility and kind of going with the flow,” Becknell said. “Like the first night that we had an audience, we had to kind of adjust to having people and having to scoot around them and run around the building. But honestly, it’s been a lot of fun, and the cast is a lot of fun.”
The play is one installment of the Alaska Theater Festival. Upcoming events in the festival include a staged reading of “The Flick” by Annie Baker and the Climate Fair for a Cool Planet. Theater Alaska will also be hosting a summer camp for children in grades three through eight starting July 21.
• Contact Natalie Buttner at natalie.buttner@juneauempire.com.
Lake Bartlett as Claudio, Bryan Crowder as Leonato, and James Patrick as Don Pedro scheme on stage during tech week. (Courtesy of Flordelino Lagundino)
