The Prologue
Our story begins with the death of an English actor and playwright. The year is 1616, and a small troupe of fellow actors hatch a hair-brained scheme: to collect as many pieces of his plays as possible from memory and their prompt books and to bind them together into what would become the First Folio, published in 1623. Could any of those actors have guessed that those plays would be preserved and performed over 400 years later?
Act I - Humble Beginnings
It is spring 1989, and a troupe of seven recently graduated University of Alberta students hatch a hair-brained scheme to perform Shakespeare in the outdoor amphitheatre in Hawrelak Park.
Annette Loiselle: I was inspired by doing Shakespeare in the Park the previous summer with David Horak in Calgary. We finished our acting degrees in the spring of '89 and very few of us had summer jobs. It struck me that we didn't have a Shakespeare Festival in Edmonton and that just wasn't right.
Lisa Meekison: The idea of creating Shakespeare in the Park gained traction. We'd meet in free spaces in the theatre department to discuss where? what? who? And most of all... how?! The answer to the latter question is, I think, the heart of the Free Will Players. While the founders might have sparked the idea, our success was down to many different people and organizations leaning in.
The players: Geoff Brumlik, Shelley Kline, Annette Loiselle, James MacDonald, Lisa Meekison, Troy O'Donnell, Declan O' Reilly, and assorted friends and fellow students.
The play: Comedy of Errors.
The problem: As it always is in theatre, money.
Annette: That first year when we did Comedy of Errors, Troy and I went dumpster diving at my old junior high school in Namao (with permission from the drama teacher), to get the flats for this first set. James and I used our own tip money from our respective restaurant jobs to fly director Sue Cox in from Toronto and she stayed in my girlfriend's basement suite.
The company of actors who founded the Festival christened themselves The Free Will Players Theatre Guild. Admission to the shows was free, so the Free Will Players funded their first ten years by passing the hat. Literally. After the bows and applause, the players would take off their costume hats and go into the crowd to collect money.
Lisa: Local businesses gave us money...a wonderful designer came up with the iconic FWP logo; the City of Edmonton let us use Hawrelak Park; volunteers helped us with Front of House; our families lent moral support... above all though, the Free Will Players succeeded because of our wonderful audiences. I will never forget the excitement of our very first night, when we saw people coming through the park to see the premiere of The Comedy of Errors. We had an audience! All the work was worth it! Then, later in the run, we had to cancel a performance because of a tornado. We sheltered under the stage and, when the storm had passed, we were astonished to see die hard Shakespeare lovers tramping across the grass, ready for the show. At that moment, we knew we were really on to something.
Act II - Growth & Adventure
The fledgling Edmonton festival had a lot of growing to do. In the early years, there was only one production, and the players and their friends produced each year's festival through a slap-dash collaboration.
Troy: In our second year we invited Kelly Handerek to direct Twelfth Night. He designed an elaborate set but we, of course, had no money to pay for it. We trucked in hundreds of old tires to create a backdrop to paint on. It actually looked alright. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that along with the tires, we brought in stagnant water filled with mosquito eggs. We had the worst mosquitoes in the park that year, and it was all our fault.
Lisa Meekison was the administrative team for the first few years, and later Linda McLachlin came aboard. In 1996, James MacDonald became the first artistic director of the Free Will Players Theatre Guild, a position he held until 2001.
While at Freewill, he directed seven productions, including King Lear, Macbeth, and The Winter's Tale. He also continued to perform with the troupe, taking on title roles in Henry V (2003) and Macbeth (2010).
Members of the original seven players shared student grants to take on admin work for the growing theatre company. On the artistic side, Stephen Heatley played a major role starting in 1991 and directing productions for five years. Others who shared in the work as Artistic Associates early on included Rebecca Starr, Liz McLaughlin, Aaron Fry, and Julien Arnold. Hiring Linda Huffman as General Manager in 1999 and adding Gail Stephanik to the team were big steps forward.
Building on a decade of successful Shakespeare in Hawrelak Park, the name was changed to River City Shakespeare Festival and a second production was added to the summer lineup in 1998. A comedy and a tragedy played on alternating nights with the same cast of actors, creating the iconic repertory theatre festival you know and love. Festival audiences continued to grow, reaching a peak of over 17,000 attendees per year in the early 2010s. In 2008, wanting to bring the festival back to its roots, we re-branded as the Freewill Shakespeare Festival.
Act Ill - Trials & Tribulations
An outdoor Shakespeare festival comes with its fair share of trials and tribulations, including being subject to the wiles of our Ambiance Director, Mother Nature. The wind and the rain have given audiences, cast and crew countless challenges and memories in 35 years.
Troy: Despite torrential rains and howling winds, we would always have a couple hundred brave, faithful souls come out on even the most miserable nights. Some audience members have confessed to me that they prefer the gloomier nights to help set the mood of the tragedies.
In 2014, strong winds tore a hole in the canopy early in spring, forcing us to reduce our season to one show and to move indoors. Attendance plummeted by seventy percent, striking a cruel blow to the festival's status as a summer mainstay.
Marianne Copithorne: There's a reason the festival bills Mother Nature as "ambiance director" in its programs, after all. Unpredictable as it is, that push and pull of the natural environment is a key factor in the success of the festival over the years.
But on good weather days, the setting sun behind the Heritage Amphitheatre adds a layer of natural beauty that simply can't be replicated in a traditional venue.
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 struck even harder. The 2020 season was cancelled, and 2021 saw roving bands of players performing at the Muttart, at the Fringe Festival, at community leagues and in people's backyards.
From the seed of that re-imagining, the 2024 festival was born. After a brief homestand at Hawrelak Park in 2022, where the weather did its best to drench our indomitable spirits, we found beauty amid the concrete in 2023 with the Spiegeltent and Shakespeare in the park(ing lot). As we celebrate this milestone and 35 years of summer productions, we look back and offer our sincere thanks and tribute to those who came before us and made it all possible.
Shelley Kline: A 35-year anniversary for a theatre company in Canada is no small feat. While I played a small part in the first year making it happen (of which I am very proud of), my hat is off to all those who have ensured, year after year, that the show goes on.
Epilogue
These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on...
(Prospero, Act 4 Scene 1)
Thanks for coming, we wish you a fond goodnight…
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