Shakespeare Lights Never Go Out

The Lights Never Go Out In Staunton, a city just twenty nine miles south of Harrisonburg, lies a theatre. This tiny Virginia theatre restores how Shakespeare’s plays would have been performed. The American Shakespeare Center takes on the daunting task of preforming a comedy or a tragedy. Only with the actors themselves, a scarce costumes, and varying props. In 1623, when the Twelfth Night was originally debut, theatres’ did not have a large Broadway budget. The American Shakespeare Center trying to recreate exactly how costuming, lighting, music and sound, and set design would be during the time of Shakespeare. The lights never go out at the Blackfriar. As a tribute to how Shakespeare’s play conditions in 1623, the recreation of the Blackfriar in Staunton never diminishes the lights. The playhouse chooses this route of theatre settings on mainly two reasons: Why Shakespeare never extinguished his lights and the purpose of recreation. During Shakespeare’s time, theatres were illuminated with candle …show more content…
Shakespeare thought that music was a common ground that all men understood. For this reason, Shakespeare had music and noises in the background of all of his playwrights and plays. The recreated Blackfriar also had popular music of our time playing. The actors played the instruments and sang the songs before every play and during the breaks of the play as well. This, I believed caused the actors to better connect with the spectators viewing the play. What differed from how Shakespeare had it was that his musical performance was throughout the play, whereas the modern take was periodically at key times during the play. This choice to limit the music could be due to the lack of an actual band since the actors where the band, and since the Blackfriar is wood sound is not absorbed as well. The structural feature of the building causes the music to be too loud and distracting to the