Shakespeare as you like it, and all over

Whether shaking up Shakespeare or nodding to Elizabethan conventions, this summer four of the region's theater companies and festivals illustrate that there's more to the Bard than anything you learned in high school.

Shakespeare in Clark Park will enliven its free production of the romantic fable The Winter's Tale (July 29 to Aug. 2) with a children's chorus, original songs, and a seven-foot ursine puppet designed by Aaron Cromie, for the play's famous stage direction ("Exit, pursued by a bear").

"I think that in Shakespeare's world, live music was such a special thing," said director Kittson O'Neill - whose husband, sound designer and composer Robert Kaplowitz, wrote tunes for the play. "I'm having the chorus generate music to give [the play] back that magical quality."

Christina May, choral director for The Winter's Tale, which concerns a jealousy-fueled spat between the kings of Sicilia and Bohemia and it consequences, described the chorus - comprising about 30 West Philly kids ranging in age from 5 to 14 - as "the heartbeat of the show."

Child actors will appear in various guises as schoolchildren or actors performing their own play, and in tableaus, as water or statues in a garden. Some will play instruments, (violin, trumpet) and most will sing.

O'Neill has also updated archaic frameworks - a sheep-shearing festival in the play's second half becomes a family gathering - and lines of dialogue that would be cryptic to modern ears.

For instance, when a clown character comments about being in a "preposterous estate," O'Neill instructed the actor to replace the misused adjective with other p-words, such as polyamorous.

And she toys with gender - by no means a new device, as men played women's parts in Shakespeare's time and long before. For example, actress Bi Jean Ngo not only portrays Hermione, the Sicilian queen wrongly accused of adultery, but also the swindling minstrel Autolycus, usually a male role.

Imagined by O'Neill as "a hip-hop agent of chaos," Ngo's Autolycus sings Elizabethan folk songs from Shakespeare's text set to music by Kaplowitz. After observing rehearsals, the composer collaboratively created the music with the actors, inspired by on-stage chemistry and Philly's musical tapestry, which ranges, Ngo notes, from "garage punk" to "Roots funk."

A bit west of Clark Park's Winter's Tale, Theatre in the X will present three free performances (Aug. 8, 15, and 22) of the tragedy Othello - about a Moorish general brought low by his aide's envy and jealousy - in Malcolm X Park, with an all-black cast.

The company, named for the park in which it has performed since it launched in 2013, sees the production both as a way to bring theater to the heart of West Philly and as an opportunity for black actors to perform Shakespeare.

Director Ozzie Jones has previously mounted all-black versions of such American classics as Death of a Salesman. In 1997, he helmed a ground-breaking production of Othello in Ireland, the first African American to direct an Irish company there. That production, which the Irish Times called "original, stimulating and provocative," featured a white Othello in blackface and a black actor as the scheming Iago.

For Theatre in the X's production, the backdrop is the rank system of the criminal underworld. Jones said that Othello, played by co-producer Carlo Campbell, "is like the 'muscle' of the Duke of Venice's crew," while love interest Desdemona is envisioned as an underboss' daughter.

"In the language, it's not so much race," said Campbell, comparing the dynamic to to Will Smith visiting his wealthy uncle in California on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. "It's this person who has this audacity to think that, from their station in life, they can be privy to rewards."

Delaware Shakespeare Festival, producing an outdoor, 1893 Chicago World's Fair-set Taming of the Shrew in Wilmington's Rockwood Park (Friday through Aug. 2), also has a local focus.

The Community Cornerstone program, developed on the heels of 2014's state-wide "I Am Hamlet" Project, brings cast and crew members to business groups and continuing education organizations.

This spring, director Samantha Bellomo and Clark Park vet Felicia Leicht (as the shrew, Kate) led "Kate Speaks" sessions about gendered social barriers in the comedy. The World's Fair frame reflects the strict gender roles of the late 19th century.

"Kate starts at the beginning with no skills to get along in the society in which she lives," Leicht said. "She's constantly railing over her position. But that doesn't mean that she doesn't actually want to get married and find a relationship."

Matters of the battlefield and of the heart make Henry V, one of this summer's Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival offerings, universal. It runs Thursday through Aug. 2. (Next up, from July 22 to Aug. 2, is Pericles, which honors the Elizabethan tradition of actors learning their lines fast, rehearsing without a director, and opening a few days later.)

"It's always funny that the battle of the sexes has been going on for 600 years," said Greg Wood, who opens the play as the Chorus, later appearing as heads of state and a herald.

As Henry, Zack Robidas performs opposite his wife, Marnie Schulenberg (French princess Katherine). Though Robidas hasn't led soldiers, he related the young king's new responsibilities to the obligations of marriage and fatherhood.

"I'm doing all the talking, but in reality she's the talker, and I'm more the thoughtful, introspective type," he said. "She's doing all the listening in the wooing scene."

Here are just a few of the Shakespeare productions in the area this summer:

Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival

DeSales University, Center Valley. Information: 610-282-9455 or www.pashakespeare.org

Henry V: Through Aug. 2. Tickets: $25-$51, with senior, student, and youth discounts.

Pericles: Wednesday through Aug. 2. Tickets: $25-$36

Shakespeare in Clark Park

Clark Park, Chester Avenue and 43d Street (in the Bowl). Information: 215-764-5345 or www.shakespeareinclarkpark.org

The Winter's Tale: 7 p.m. July 29 through Aug. 2. Admission: Free.

Theatre in the X 2015

Malcolm X Park, South 52d and Pine Streets. Information: www.theatreinthex.com

Othello: Aug. 8 (5 p.m.); Aug. 15 (6 p.m.); and Aug. 22 (6 p.m.). Admission: Free.

Pulley & Buttonhole Theatre and White Pines Productions

Abington Art Center, 515 Meetinghouse Road, Jenkintown. Information: 215-887-4882, abingtonartcenter.org

Midsummer Night's Dream: 7 p.m., Aug. 11-13. Tickets: $5; 12 and under free.

Delaware Shakespeare Festival

Rockwood Park, 4651 Washington St. Extension, Wilmington. Information: 302-415-3373 or www.delshakes.org

The Taming of the Shrew: Through Aug. 2. Tickets: $17-$38, discounts for seniors, students, and military.