Shakespeare fest to move indoors

BANGOR – Back in 1994, Mark Torres was so excited about inaugurating Bangor’s summer Shakespeare festival, he held the first press conference on the banks of the Penobscot River. He even went so far as to call the event “Shakespeare on the River,” and for the past eight years, the festival has been a major component of downtown summer activities for families and fans of the Bard.

Now, however, Torres, who is artistic director of the Penobscot Theatre Company and the festival founder, is taking the river out of Shakespeare. Or to be more exact, he’s moving the Maine Shakespeare Festival to the Bangor Opera House, where he hopes to increase the production values of the four repertory shows that make up the festival and to create a more comfortable venue for theatergoers.

“In terms of the natural setting, the river is great,” said Torres on Tuesday. “It’s fun to be out under the stars and to have everything that comes with the river.”

But, he hastily added, all that natural beauty came with a price. The waterfront is framed on one side by active train tracks with traffic that invariably interrupted performances. Environmental elements, including a rainstorm that took down lighting towers and threatened to do the same to the staging last summer, nightly taunted the technical crew. The lack of storage for set pieces and equipment was a further inconvenience, and, once the box office began taking reservations for seats a few years ago, pre-show activities became poorly attended.

With increasing pressure, these factors influenced Torres’ decision to move indoors for next summer’s productions of “As You Like It,” “Macbeth,” “The Fantasticks” and “Alice in Wonderland.”

The challenge now, he said, is designing four alternating sets that are easily manipulated for the staging of each show.

“We’ve changed our venue and I think it’s going to work quite well,” said Torres, who is busily working on the design for the upcoming holiday production of “A Christmas Carol.”

“The outdoor elements won’t be there for the Shakespeare festival but we have all the elements we need to make it work in the theater. It’s really about trying to create an environment that works best for our patrons. Some people may think we’re taking away the most important element. And that’s true for those folks. But for a lot of people the play is the main attraction. We have a new challenge, but it’s one we’re going to embrace.”