Mackinac Island Shakespeare Festival Returns

This story first appeared in the August 4, 2023, Mackinac Island Town Crier print edition

The Starling Shakespeare Company is returning to Mackinac Island for the third annual Mackinac Island Shakespeare Festival (MISF) in August. The company will host 16 Island performances in Marquette Park, three workshops, and one performance in Mackinaw City.

Performances began Wednesday, August 2, and continue Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays until Sunday, August 27, at 6 p.m. Plays will alternate between “Julius Caesar,” a story of political intrigue and betrayal, and “As You Like It,” a comedy with a merry band of misfits where the actors whisk the audience away to the Forest of Arden. Co-founder of the company, Jessie Lillis, along with the help of co-founder and artistic director, Heron Kennedy, will then begin the artist-in-residence program with the Mackinac State Historic Parks Tuesday, August 29, to work on adapting a site-specific production of “The Tempest” for the projected 2024 Mackinac Island Shakespeare Festival. The company will host workshops Tuesdays, August 8, 15, and 22, at 6 p.m. at The Richard and Jane Manoogian Mackinac Art Museum. Registration is required and can be completed on the Mackinac Arts Council’s website.

Starling Shakespeare Company was founded in 2020 with the goal of bringing the works of Shakespeare to places that might not have access to them, Ms. Lillis said. The year 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, was a time of upheaval in the theater industry with much uncertainty about what the theater was going to look like, she said. It also provided time to pause and reevaluate practices that weren’t working. But it was also an opportunity to improve things going forward. Ms. Lillis, a Michigan native, grew up visiting the Island and became enamored with it. She remembers a visit with her family, sitting in Marquette Park, saying that the park would be a great venue for Shakespeare plays. She spent several years working in corporate human resources before going back to graduate school to study Shakespeare. Now, more than 10 years later, bringing the festival to the Island for a third season and preparing for the fourth, is a full-circle moment for Ms. Lillis.

“[It’s something] I’ve been dreaming about and scheming about for a little over a decade,” Ms. Lillis said.

This season, the company will have been touring for three weeks prior to coming to the Island, moving constantly around six states and at least twice that many cities. They are looking forward to staying put for a while and getting to perform in a “naturally stunning” place, Ms. Lillis said. The Island brings such a variety of spectators to the show, Ms. Lillis said, between new audience members each night and the regulars who live on the Island who show up for more than one performance. Ms. Lillis also said she loves getting to introduce people to the Island, as they have three new company members this year who have never performed on the Island.

The company is sticking to the combination of bringing a tragedy and a comedy to the festival to give it some variety. The shows have only five actors, but there are up to 30 or more characters in “Julius Caesar,” and closer to 20 in “As You Like It.” One actor can play up to nine characters in a single show, and it allows audiences who come back for multiple nights to see the diverse range of characters and roles the actors play from one show to another.

“As You Like It” has lots of music, and they encourage audience participation. It is fun to see people get into it, Ms. Lillis said. In their adaptations, they also adjust run times to between 90 and 100 minutes so visitors to the Island can catch the last ferry to the mainland if necessary – not a typical thing Shakespeare plays usually must account for, Ms. Lillis said.

The cast and crew for this year’s MISF include Raphael Massie, director of “As You Like It,” Doreen Bechtol, director of “Julius Caesar,” fight director Hannah Roccisano, actor Maurice-Aimé Green, actor Ms. Lillis, actor Ryan Wilson, actor Lloyd Wayne Taylor, actor Heron Kennedy, stage manager Jessica Boyles, and designer Andrea Williams.

“We’re just so excited to come back and spend another month on the Island,” Ms. Lillis said. “It’s been such a supportive community and such a great place to grow this project.”