“The Comedy of Errors” is a Shakespearean play that Allen Community College students are set to perform Thursday through Saturday, April 24-26. They will be staging the production at 7:30 p.m. in the Bowlus Fine Arts Center. The show is approximately 70 minutes long without an intermission.
The play is one of William Shakespeare’s more light-hearted works; the actors often communicate through couplets, or two lines of verse, while utilizing slapstick humor. The play, written over 500 years ago, will be acted out through a variety of masks to showcase the mistaken identities that are crucial to the plot.
Liesl Wilhoft, a freshman actor from Parsons, said, “We are all really excited to perform this at the theater. We have put in a lot of time and are excited to show the public what we can do.” The students have been working hard on memorizing their lines and using rehearsal time after school to make the play as good as it can be, Wilhoft added.
Some of the students have put together an extensive set of theatrical property while others go over their lines with other actors.
The auditions for this play were at the same time of The One Acts, where they read lines to director Tony Piazza, who also plays as Egeon, a merchant from Syracuse. From there they were cast in their parts in which they will perform over the weekend.
“The thing about theater is, you can read it about it and talk about it, but the best thing is just to watch it.” Piazza said, “It is like going to a movie. Just like any movie there will be some things you like or don’t like, but we try to make it accessible.”
When asked to forecast the reception of the play, Piazza said, “We put the work in; it’s up to the audience to judge now.”