Cristal Palace Spiegeltent, where Freewill Shakespeare Festival will perform this summer. Photo by West Coast Spiegeltents

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

For their resident playwright, it’s the big 4-5-9. For the Freewill Shakespeare Festival, it’s season 34, and full of mid-play dramatic developments.

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Evicted from their home stage by the lunatic City plan of a three-YEAR closure for Hawrelak Park renos, the Freewill company has have been scrambling to find its footing on the move. As of Shakespeare’s birthday Sunday they have exciting news of a new home for their upcoming two-play rep edition — Twelfth Night alternating with Romeo and Juliet — that will rescue them from a life of wandering this summer.

A tent is involved. But no one (sane) would call it camping: it’s a vintage spiegeltent (Flemish for mirror tent, or travelling dance hall), built in Belgium in 1947. As Freewill artistic director Dave Horak explained at Will’s birthday bash Sunday at Metro Cinema, the hand-made spiegeltent where you’ll see a besotted duke declare “if music be the food of love, play on” and Juliet wonder “wherefore art thou Romeo?”, from Aug. 8 to Sept. 3, is a real beauty, a work of art in itself. This “Cristal spiegeltent,” as this example is called, is lined with hundreds of mirrors and stained glass; it has French oak floors. And it will house an audience of about 220.

Cristal Palace Spiegeltent. Photo by West Coast Spiegeltents.

Explore Edmonton’s arts programming manager Fawnda Mithrush explained that the tent — one of only three actively touring spiegeltents in North America (32 in the world) — will be set up at Edmonton EXPO Centre (7515 118 Ave.) for the entire summer. Rented from West Coast Spiegeltents, it will house shows during a reimagined version of Klondike Days and more; the lineup will be announced by Explore Edmonton in the next few weeks.

Cristal Palace Spiegeltent. Photo by West Coast Spiegeltents

The Shakespeare productions will be trimmed to suit the smaller spiegeltent venue. And both will happen in the round, surrounded by the audience. As Horak explained, a cast of 10, a mix of veterans and newcomers, will be in both productions, in the bold contemporary Freewill house style. He himself will direct Romeo and Juliet for the first time, “a beautiful quick, passionate, hot play,” he says. And Twelfth Night, a mysteriously manic and multi-hued blend of melancholy and joy, mistaken identity and self-discovery, will be under the direction of up-and-comer Amanda Goldberg. The comedy, she says, is a wonderful opportunity “to explore gender identity through the queer lens of today.”

Jessy Ardern and Christina Nguyen are Romeo and Juliet, star-cross’d victims of a long-standing generational feud. In Twelfth Night Nguyen is Viola, one of Shakespeare’s most resourceful and agile heroines, with Kristin Unruh as Olivia, Scott Shpeley as Orsino, and Troy O’Donnell as Malvolio. The double-duty Freewill cast also includes Brett Dahl, Dean Stockdale, Graham Mothersill, Nadien Chu, and Yassine El Fassi El Fihri.

Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night alternate between Aug. 8 and Sept. 3. Tickets (already on sale!) and the full performance schedule are at freewillshakespeare.com.