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• Twelfth Night by Shakespeare in the Woods

Shakespeare in the Woods is not the Shakespeare from your high school English class.

For one thing, the Manchester-based theater company's riffs on the Bard are set in modern-day Vermont, not the Elizabethan era. Actors dress in casual Vermont garb, not period clothing. And the characters aren't confined to the gender binary — this Macbeth, for example, uses they/them pronouns, with the script adapted accordingly.

The outdoor theater company does Shakespeare through "a modern, radical, and gender expansive queer lens." Beginning this week, it will alternate performances of Macbeth and Twelfth Night, or What You Will Wednesdays through Sundays, through September 8, on the lawn of the Equinox Golf Resort & Spa in Manchester.

Inspired by Baz Luhrmann's 1996 film Romeo + Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, Pawlet native Katharine Maness started the theater company in 2019. Though the dialogue in the movie is still the Bard's, the film is set in the fictional, modern-day town of Verona Beach.

"Putting Shakespearean text in our contemporary society was a thing that clicked for me," Maness said. "It makes it feel accessible to audiences, and it makes it feel relatable to our actual lives."

Twelfth Night already has some gender-bending in the original script: Viola, disguised as a man, finds herself in the middle of a love triangle, with both her suitor and love interest unaware of her true gender identity.

Director Roberto Di Donato noted that when the play was performed in the Elizabethan era, it was illegal for women to appear on stage in public performances. The absurd result "was a man playing a woman playing a man," Di Donato said.

But his take on Twelfth Night, or What You Will has no such arbitrary rules. The cast includes a number of nonbinary and transgender individuals, and Di Donato was open to casting choices that transcend traditional gender expectations, he said.

Di Donato's production is set not in the original Illyria, but in the fictional Illyria, Vermont. The play's social dynamics, conveyed through costumes, reflect contemporary class distinctions between wealthy and working-class Vermonters.

"It became a whole conversation of, Where are they from, and how much money do they have?" Di Donato said. "We're like, Do they wear Dickies? Do they wear overalls? Do they wear ski suits?"

Jess Slaght, director of Macbeth and an artistic associate at the Public Theater in New York City, said she was also attracted to the Vermont performance because of its contemporary interpretations.

"The artistic director specifically mentioned in the ad that they wanted to do a sapphic Macbeth, that they wanted Macbeth to either be a woman or a nonbinary person," she said. "As a queer woman myself, I said, 'Oh, yes, sign me up for that play!'"

Slaght has also worked as an associate director at Shakespeare in the Park, a series of free, open-air Shakespeare performances in Central Park.

In that spirit, Vermont Public Theater will present a free matinee of Twelfth Night, or What You Will on Sunday, August 25, at Merchants Park in Bennington. In lieu of tickets, audience donations will go toward Bennington County Coalition for the Homeless.

"We see it as a communal experience and a public service," Maness said. "Arts should be accessible to everyone."