Different spaces provide different inspiration, so Director Sean Hargadon had the cast of Janus Theatre Company’s latest production rehearse in five different locations.
“Part of using different spaces to rehearse was to bring out different elements,” he said. “If you work in one place all the time, things can get a little stagnant, so I wanted to mix things up so it didn’t.”
The various venues helped create different feelings and reactions from the cast, Hargadon said.
“It’s amazing how much it changes stuff,” he said.
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The Janus Theatre Company will open its 18th season with the Chicago-area premiere of the supernatural thriller “King of Shadows,” which runs Nov. 6 to 22 at Elgin Art Showcase in downtown Elgin. Performances are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays.
Loosely inspired by William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the play is described as “Stephen King meets Shakespeare.” It is not Shakespearean text, though, Hargadon said.
“It’s regular language,” he said.
In the play, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, graduate student Jessica is doing research on the homeless and meets 15-year-old runaway Nihar. He tells her there is a mythical world beneath our world, ruled by the King of Shadows. The king, he says, is a demon-like creature hunting San Francisco’s homeless population and is trying to find him. Some of the characters in the mythical world also are connected to characters in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
“The story Nihar paints of them is not the same story that Shakespeare paints of them,” Hargadon said. “So it’s a really interesting piece of theater if you know Shakespeare, and certainly a really fun piece of theater if you don’t know Shakespeare. It basically starts out pretty straightforward, and then it gets really fantastical.”
The play asks of audience members: What do you believe?
“The play is really kind of fascinating because it’s relevant. It’s got a lot of cool questions that it asks about the society we live in,” Hargadon said.
Written in 2008, the play addresses a lot of issues going on in the world today. There is a policeman, Jessica’s boyfriend, who is dealing with doing the right thing by society, but sometimes that doesn’t happen, Hargadon said. Jessica’s sister is a student who doesn’t feel content or know what she wants to do with herself.
“And her older sister (Jessica), who is trying to make a difference through her research, but does her research have a practical application or is it just theoretical and a waste of money?” he said.
And Nihar raises a question: Do you believe in things beyond your own experiences?
“There’s a little bit of everything going on, so that’s what makes it real fun and challenging to work with because it’s not just a straightforward piece of theater where you just put it up and you do it,” Hargadon said. “We’re finding out that a lot of what he wrote has to be tied to a lot of experiences today that you see on the news or hear about.”
While the play is entertainment, it has a lot of other stuff going on in it, he said. “When you wrestle with the questions, it makes the play that much more interesting and fun to do,” he said.
Some of those questions are explored as Hargadon blogs about the production.
“I like to kind of pull the curtain back so people can see how you put a play together,” he said.
Because playwright Aguirre-Sacasa is also a screenwriter and comic book writer, the “King of Shadows” has elements not typically seen on stage, Hargadon said.
“You get a lot of interesting things thrown together which you don’t see on stage very often,” he said. “It’s just not common to have those types of characters in a modern play. But it makes it very intriguing to watch.”
With the play in a small staging area seating about 40, it is recommended tickets be purchased in advance. The close quarters help reinforce the supernatural vibe of the play.
“With this show, it’s very much everybody’s on top of the action all the time. It also creates that sense of otherness, creepiness, closeness,” Hargadon said. “For shows like this, you don’t get to have a lot of special effects to make it work. It’s really about how the atmosphere changes in the room because of the story and the actors.”
The cast of four did a lot of exercises in preparing the play, making it “fun to crack it open and see what’s there,” he said.
“When you’re working on it, if you’re finding new things it’s still fresh and it’s still exciting. The moment you figure it out, it can almost get a little dull, and you have to be careful it doesn’t reflect on the performance,” Hargadon said. “I try to keep everybody on their toes and keep things moving so that doesn’t happen. We want the audience to be as surprised as we are as we go through the play.”
Kathy Cichon is a freelance writer for the Courier-News.
“King of Shadows”
When: Nov. 6-22
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Where: Elgin Art Showcase, 164 Division St., Elgin
Tickets: $16
Information: janusplays.com