At summer’s height, when many theaters are dark, two South Sound companies go out to play in picnic-perfect parks. Both Animal Fire Theatre and String & Shadow Puppet Theater stage major shows when the days are long and the skies most likely blue.
Animal Fire is producing the seldom-staged and seriously silly Love’s Labour’s Lost, opening July 3.
“I just love this play so much,” said Drew Doyle, the Animal Fire regular who’s directing Lost. “I suggested this play to the group, and it seemed to resonate with everybody. … It’s a lot of fun, and everybody likes the idea of having some fun these days.”
“This is a really fun play,” agreed Scott Douglas, who runs Animal Fire with husband Brian Hatcher. “It’s silly, and it’s clever.”
Douglas is having a ball playing the bombastic Don Armado, a self-important fellow who embodies every stereotype of Spanish machismo. “He’s like something out of a Hemingway novel,” Douglas said. “He’s a buffoon. He’s a clown.”
Armado is the play’s chief comic character, but he’s far from the only one whose way of speaking would make Yogi Berra and Mrs. Malaprop seem erudite by comparison.
“A lot of the characters misuse words either because they are trying to sound more important than they are or because they are trying to impress somebody,” Douglas said.
Those characters are generally men — at least as Shakespeare wrote the parts. In the Animal Fire production, Anne Tracy plays the pedantic Holofernes, for whom the bard invented the word “honorificabilitudinitatibus,” meaning “the state of being able to achieve honors.”
In fact, much of the humor is at the male characters’ expense. The King of Navarre (Maxwell Reister) and friends (Kalen McCrea, (Isaac DeLarme and Adam Ashcraft) vow to renounce the company of women for three years and then find themselves smitten with a quartet of alluring visitors to the court (Korja Giles, Kimberlee Wolfson, Hillary Lucero and Sarah Forbes). Also in the cast are Hatcher, Mandy Baker, Genevieve Marchand, Ed Thorpe and Alex Tracy.
“Guys do really dumb things in this play, and it’s very entertaining,” Douglas said. “Love makes them dumb.”
“The men have those lofty ideas of love, and they don’t think things through,” Doyle said. “The women are grounded and see things the way they are … and are more than happy to give the guys grief for it. That’s lots of fun for the women in this play.”
Also having lots of fun are the puppeteers and artists of String & Shadow. The company’s visually stunning and thought-provoking puppet shows are packed with silliness, wordplay and often pointed humor.
This will be the first year since 2020 that the troupe isn’t producing a new summer show. Instead, 2025’s Night at the Grand Opera is back, with two weekends of performances in Olympia’s Wonderwood Park and a two-month tour (https://www.stringandshadow.com/calendar) of Washington, Oregon, California and Montana.
“It takes a lot of work to create a show,” said Emily McHugh, who leads the puppet troupe with Donald Palardy. “With this show in particular, we really refined it, and the cast is so strong. It feels like it’s really ready to go on tour. We want as many people as possible to see it.”
The show stands up to multiple viewings, in part because much of the dialogue is improvised and audience participation is encouraged.
Too, the visuals are impressive even if you’ve seen them before. The elaborate sets were inspired by pop-up books, and many of the costume pieces are like life-sized paper dolls from which the puppeteers’ faces pop out.
Opera weaves together multiple storylines. There’s an on-stage opera and off-stage drama among the humans working at and attending the theater. And then there are the insects and animals who live there, led by the dapper and dignified Fly on the Wall (Anthony Szabo), who narrates the action.
The other puppeteers are McHugh, Palardy, Jordanna Averett, Harrison Hannon, Hailey Hubbard, Kai Johnson, Velva Kelley, Kelsey Magnuson, Jennica Martinez, Jordan Richards, Aurora Sonenshine, Marlo Winter and Christine Yorba.
For 2027, McHugh plans another new creation. “Next year, we’re going to do a new show and focus on all local performances,” she said.
Fans of Animal Fire won’t have to wait till next summer to see more. The company is hoping to bring back An Iliad, a one-person update on Homer’s Trojan War classic that Douglas performed just before the pandemic.
The company will also collaborate with Emerald City Music (https://emeraldcitymusic.org/) for April’s Inspired by Shakespeare, which will weave together music by such composers as Felix Mendelssohn and Sergei Prokofiev with sonnets, scenes and soliloquies.
Insect repellent is an excellent idea.
WHAT: Love’s Labour’s Lost
WHEN:
7 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays July 3-26
WHERE:
Wonderwood Park (near the tennis courts), 5304 32nd Ave. SE, Lacey
TICKETS:
Free, with donations appreciated
LEARN MORE:
https://animalfiretheatre.com
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WHAT: Night at the Grand Opera
WHEN:
7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 4 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays July 24-Aug. 2
WHERE:
Decatur Woods Park, 1015 Decatur St. SW, Olympia
TICKETS:
$20-$35 donation suggested, with no one turned way for lack of funds
LEARN MORE:
https://www.stringandshadow.com