Procrastinators take note: There are only two performances left of "Hamlet" at the Woodward Shakespeare Festival (it plays 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday), so if you've been telling yourself all summer that you were going to catch the show, time is running out. To mark this last weekend of the season, I caught up with Adam Meredith, who takes on the massive challenge of the title character. My interview with him starts in Friday's 7 section. Here's a continuation:

Question: This production has sparked a lot of public comment online on the Beehive. Your thoughts?

Answer: I have cruised by a few times to see what is being said about the production. I think it's always great that people are talking about it and that there is such a vibrant variety of opinions -- some complimentary and others not so much. That is fine, though, because in the end you can't be all things to all people and if this production was,we would be doing something wrong. The enthusiastic people who come to the park looking for entertainment and a nice night that is a change of pace from the 'same old thing' say enough generously granting us with their time and applause. That is reward enough for me. Lets keep the discussion and exchange of ideas going. My concern is when it becomes damning when all we are using the forum for is to rail on someone or something. As long as the discussion moves the work forward and can help inspire people to either come see a show or produce a show I am all for it.

Below: Here's a Woodward Shakespeare video promo for "Hamlet":

What kind of state of mind are you in before a performance?

Oddly relaxed and nervous. Mostly going through a scan of my body and mind and double checking that all systems are go. I spend a few hours preparing before I get to the theater, stretching out my body, warming up my voice, checking back in with the substance behind key emotional moments, and I go over my notes from the night before looking closer at things that didn't work, moments that are losing their edge, where did I fall off the stage etc. I spend time trying to reconnect with where Hamlet is at the beginning of the show, what's the under current running through his life, touching in on the anchors to each scene for me and double checking where he is coming from, where he is going and what he is doing in each scene.

How has director Arlene Schulman's concept of an empowered and complicit Ophelia and Gertrude affected your portrayal?

My initial response was very skeptical, as I am sure is anyone who hears about this approach. During the rehearsal process there was a lot of tinkering with the type of relationships that existed in the play and personally the extent of what Hamlet knows (there were moments where I had to leave the room or put my fingers in my ears so that I didn't know everything from the outset and still had room for discovery during the play). This isn't the Hamlet that I would have played five years ago and that one wouldn't have been the one I would have done, say, five years before that. It does allow me to find a place where Ophelia is too close to the fire and in order to keep her safe from all the havoc that Hamlet eventually causes in the play he must push her away. If he truly loves her then it is too dangerous for her to be obviously a part if his plans. It really heightens the way that not only Hamlet would care for Ophelia and tactically how he approaches or deals with her scene to scene.

Much of how Gertrude is approached comes from the way the Ghost of Hamlet's father seems to implicate his former wife. He acknowledges a cooling in their relationship (How?Why?) and instructs Hamlet to leave her alone to her own guilt and the judgment of heaven (Why?). Obviously he knows more then Hamlet does and more than he has time to tell. Did he drive her into the arms of another man, his own brother? Was she tired of his warlike Herculean ways? As Hamlet it places a stronger suspicion and judgment upon his mother, replacing his initial disgust and confusion for her sudden marriage to his uncle, the newly crowned king smoothly blocking Hamlet's own ascension to the throne. Hamlet could easily point his finger in Gertrude's direction as the cause of his father's murder and possibly as the instigator.

Do you think most audience members are aware of that concept? Or is it something that only scholars would notice?

Hit and miss. Not only is it discussed in Arlene's program notes but also in the staging. Some people have enjoyed the show without noticing or getting 'hung up' on this concept, others have said they saw and they don't really think it works or really dig it.

Most of this concept is based on things that are ambiguous; it was not just a means to an end of a particular agenda that WSF or Arlene has. For example, in the First Folio (1623) of Shakespeare's plays, Ophelia is not given an exit before the Nunnery scene before Hamlet enters to deliver 'To be or not to be...' Whether she hides, or Hamlet speaks directly to her or around her, or Hamlet is alone with the audience, it is not clear what Shakespeare intended. What is clear to me is that any production that followed Shakespeare's direction to leave Ophelia on stage and for a Hamlet to come on stage and pretend she is not there or doesn't see her seems to me like a Hamlet that is a bit of a dummy and not really one that I would enjoy much--if she is left on stage. It has been modern editors writing in her exit or re-entrance to the scene. I am not saying one way is right or wrong, I am saying that when producing this play you have the choice. This isn't the first time this has been staged in this way; it's simply not as common.

In the end I think it still ends being the same play mostly, just some of the how and why gets tweaked a touch. Hamlet still ends up being some fan favorite anti hero. I never felt he was the grand hero we confuse him with or great mythic heroes he compares himself to. He makes mistakes, heck what he takes as his big plan to reveal Claudius only makes himself vulnerable by showing his hand to the 'bad guy,' and when the play is over he has killed or been responsible for the death of people in his life, not just the one man he had sworn to kill.

I don't feel as if anything that this production is attempting to tackle is unsound.

For people who aren't familiar, talk a little about your theater background, including your experience in the Fresno theater scene and your current career plans/options.

I grew up in Clovis, bummed around Fresno a little before I moved to Chicago where I went to an arts conservatory at Roosevelt University (BFA). I lived and fielded regional theatre work out of Chicago for about 6 years working at all levels of theatre, from non-equity store fronts and projects on rooftops or street fests to big equity houses and Tony winners Chicago Shakespeare and The Goodman Theatre. After noticing that I was getting less theatre work (hiring more student actors came en vogue and it became smarter finance to not hire recent grads for more money) and spending more time working at bars and gyms it became harder to keep involved with a theatre company I worked closely with there. I started getting disenchanted and one day got a call that one of my actor friends and collaborators had been murdered inside his own apartment -- I felt like I could not live there anymore and moved back to Fresno.

While I was here in Fresno regrouping and preparing for the Graduate School Quest (I feel and wish anyone who is all the best) I worked with WSF leading up to their first summer where I was in both shows that year, as well as early work with Epic Theatre for the Rogue Festival leading up to working on The Shape of Things at the FAM, then co-co-founding ART with like minded friends and rogues where I have worked as an actor and a director in our productions of Cuckoo's Nest, Arcadia, The Tempest and Love's Fire. That's all really a gloss, but might help put me into some perspective.

What's your opinion of the current local theater scene?

I do have some concern and reservations about the current state of the local theatre scene. I am concerned that the potential and fertile ground that was there just a few short years ago seems to have dried up. It saddens my that Janine Christl had to cease Epic Theatre and I am disturbed to hear that in recent days Theatre Ventoux has been put on hold. I think it's a marker of how hard times are right now, how much energy it takes (not to mention personal funds) to keep a theatre running and that most of the theatre being produced in Fresno is just not economically sound. There is so much work and not much help. It only seems like a matter of time until someone with artistic endeavors loses steam in Fresno. I feel like the loss of Epic Theatre and Janine's voice in the local arts community will be greatly missed. I am glad that she will have more opportunity to train younger actors at FCC but her contribution outside of the academic setting is such an asset. I hope that she will have the chance to share her training, insights, management skills and artistry to some degree outside of her new position. I urge anyone out there to support their local theatre scene with attendance or lending a hand to do some of the work or spreading the word to friends and neighbors who may enjoy seeing a play. I also would like to urge many of The Valley's theatre makers to accept the help that gets offered and allow the community to grow and flourish.

The local scene gets to be very insular and I don't think it needs to be that way. There is so much to learn from other people, discoveries to be made. Encourage newcomers. Everyone has something to contribute. I find that there is a lot of ego in a non traditional sense of healthy confidence and drive, there seems to be a conflict of ownership that is directly opposed to collaboration. Ownership of 'my company', 'my play', 'my concept', 'my choice' etc, as opposed to those things being a jumping off point at the beginning of a rehearsal and then through exploration of relationships and richer emotional lives that comes spontaneously and from the specific group of artist in the room working together on the play. There could be a more vital and vibrant theatre scene if everyone involved could learn to truly work together better, to give an idea up to someone else and see what it can become past the initial idea, to have the honesty and humility to say that some things just don't work or could be better. This is something that I think would be useful for anyone involved at any level in the theatre community to embrace before the 'scene', as it were, dries up. And I would hope some would stop saying 'No I can't/won't do that.' Allow yourself to be flexible, not so rigid. Rigid things break whereas objects that are flexible have forms that allow them to last longer.

If anyone wants to launch a theatre company I hope they learn how develop an audience and a network of donors or subscribers. Hire a grant writer or learn how to write grant proposals, find donors that are excited by the vision of your theatre and its mission in the community and work with them to bring to the people....if you want it to last. Nurture that relationship just as an actor would sharing a speech with an audience.

I would like to see more productions of new plays or a workshop type setting to present local playwrights. That seems to be lacking and is always exciting.

Woodward Shakespeare Festival recently celebrated its 100th performance. Is it where you think it should be? Any suggestions for ways to make things better?

I feel like it's getting there. I have always hoped that they could include a 3rd show in their season or off season which is finally becoming a reality. One show that mixes it up for the audience and gives them something a little different: plays about Shakespeare (The Beard of Avon) or loosely based around one of his plays (I Hate Hamlet, Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead) or other writers of the period (Marlowe, Goldsmith) and maybe even a Gilbert and Sullivan musical.

I would like there to be a stronger vision for the future. Having just celebrated 100 performances, what is the plan for the next 500 shows or what could be dreamt up for ten years from now? What is the short term goal for WSF and the reasonable long term goals? I feel a lot of passion and desire for WSF to create a sustainable future but not an agreed direction to move forward. I will someday like to see a mix of talent that includes the occasional Equity guest artist, actors looking for summer work from other markets, promising students from across the country (technicians, actors, designers, house), veterans and local newcomers looking to cut their teeth on Shakespeare. It could be a great educational experience and give audiences both surprising new actors as well as their local favorites.

I think it would be great to see the emergence of an Artistic Director that could excite audiences and local artists by gathering the best people possible to bring WSF to the Valley each year, surrounded by committed, confident and collaborative individuals. Someone that could give guidance, support and a long term vision, but with the ability to let anyone involved with WSF room to grow, make discoveries, surprise themselves and an opportunity to succeed. And also a Executive Director or Business Manager that could help raise and manage funding so that the Artistic Director and their team could focus on the creative work and not get spread thin by planning fundraisers etc. I would like to see an unified team working for an exciting vision of what WSF can grow into in the next five years and start letting that vision be the structure that makes its own choices because it will naturally tell you what's right and what's next.

It takes so much work for WSF to put a show up that some of the other finer details of company management and promotion get skimped on because there is a small number of people doing such a large volume of work. So much time and sweat goes into just getting one show off the ground that it's hard to look forward and plan ahead because the bottom line of theatre (beat the clock) is barreling down on only a few people and that has limited WSF in some respects. It is more than admirable what has been accomplished thus far in the park, but If WSF is to continue for another 5 or ten years that small group of people needs to be commended and also can use additional help. The reason why WSF has gotten this far and grown is because there are some people in this community that have a passion and a desire to grow something and some other people have an interest or desire to be entertained. I would encourage anyone excited by the company or the prospect of its future to get involved in any capacity no matter who you are or what you do. Carpenters, painters, seamstress are of great value and a scarce one at that. Anyone who works or had experience in marketing or public relations could lend a hand to help increase the company's presence in the Valley and stay visible year round. Everyone in this community has the opportunity to put a brick and help build a lasting institution for the Valley.

Expanding a little on the MMA noise controversy, what has it been like to perform with noise issues in the park? Do you think it will be resolved? Or is the festival on a collision course in a battle it can't win?

As difficult and surreal as it can be hearing AC/DC, Timmy T and crowds roaring while you are either acting in or watching a production of Hamlet, I really don't find it affecting the quality of the show negatively. I know that it affords my performance many unique opportunities to share certain choices, feelings and thoughts in a way that I wouldn't normally if it had been a regular night in the park. The audience on that particular night was very focused and very responsive. I am very grateful to the people who left their homes that night to come see Hamlet and stayed in spite of the distraction across the street. I had to, they didn't and yet they chose to. Theatre is a shared experience and sometimes it takes something like the MMA event to bind the audience and players together in that way. Maybe we as performers get lax or as audience members expect to sit down and be lulled by a pleasant night in the park. That show was very spontaneous, fun and refreshing ... but it wasn't easy for anyone involved.

Once the MMA show was over it did seem hazardous. The police presence was unmistakable, from the minute I was about to enter the park. At times it felt like doing a piece of political theatre in a police state with the helicopters flying over head, car alarms getting set of by motorcycles and the noise from the exiting MMA audience--in some cases screaming obscenities at our audience, the festival in general and at those of us on stage. I would have to say that was the part that felt dangerous, like there could be some sort of riot or unnecessary incident, luckily there wasn't but it was jarring and in retrospect shines a light on how little respect we can carry for 'other people' sometimes. When I think about it now it hurts a little to have gone through that but even worse is to think that people in this community would want to disturb and disrupt others who also were having a good time that night in the park more than it does that I could hear it from the stage and my own personal irritation.

Will it be resolved? That's really not up to me to say. I think that falls upon WSF and the city to have a very open dialogue and relationship that is clear, honest and flexible. It's really an issue of scheduling, planning ahead, commitment and volume levels. All of the 'conflicting events' (and I do hesitate to call these events conflicts) really might not have been as big of a distraction to our audiences if they would have started and ended according to their advertised and agreed times. I think in three different instances these other events were scheduled to start nearly an hour before the WSF curtain time and either started at the same time or within minutes.

I do think that what WSF does should not be discounted by any stretch of the imagination. Even though this company is still in its infancy it is not 30 people running around the park with swords wearing capes and corsets. Roughly 350 people a night are coming out during the season to enjoy an evening of free entertainment in their local park. If you were to just take that general average and multiply that by the number of shows WSF presents in a season it's not a small number, in fact in a week it's a respectable amount of people coming to the park. This provides a valuable sense of community that I don't think is offered elsewhere in Fresno, so why discount it? I also wouldn't discount other special events in the park that pop up during the summer. I agree with the article that ran in the Valley Voices section last week in support of MMA that this was just poorly planned and in the future the parks events schedule should be put together more thoroughly.

For me, at least, you've always come across on stage as intense. Do you think of yourself as intense off-stage as well?

Hmm. That's a tough one for me to gauge. I don't particularly feel like I am an intense person but I am not on the outside looking at me. I do think that I am a fairly curious person. My curiosity and passions tend to mix and get fairly consuming. When I am working I do get very focused and determined on problem solving and being prepared near the point of obsession...ok to the point of obsession that can carry over into my daily life. I do get tunnel vision working and preparing but I think it's because I feel like I do have to work harder then others in some cases. I am not a quick memorizer, I am very impulsive and can lose track of what I was doing easily and it requires so much ground work for me to get to the point where I can explore the world of a play as freely as others can and to the expectations I place on myself. Probably a mix of my own insecurities, fears and heart.

Passionate is probably more how I would define myself, but that's only given to things I have a passion for (look at the length of our conversation and these responses as an example). My onstage focus is strong and sharp but it's not turned inwards necessarily. It's put on what I am doing or who is on stage with me or making sure that this passion or what ever it is gets out of me or off of me and onto the audience. Sometimes (I think this is visible in Hamlet) that means taking to the audience and other times inviting the audience to look inside of me. That's not all the time though. I like to sit back and watch stand-up comedy, have a dinner or play games with family and friends. I love watching baseball at home or in the ballpark. Come to think of it I am sure plenty of folks could say I am painting myself into a corner when it comes to obsession when the subject is baseball, particularly with my natural, healthy affinity for The Red Sox and The Cubs.


Playing Hamlet was one of your dreams. Talk about that. What's your next dream?

Gee, I really don't know. It's been fairly terrifying thinking about what's next. I have the comfort of knowing that I have school left for a year and then I will be off on internship somewhere on the East Coast or in the Midwest before they formally grant me my MFA...and that school should keep me busy until the next dream comes to the surface of my imagination. I have my eye on a few theatres I would like to work at in the next few years. But my own passion for being onstage could just as easily wear thin and I have enjoyed teaching at Ohio University, so maybe helping to train younger actors could be a focus down the road. I have been compiling and refining my experiences on stage, in the classroom and in the audience for a book that I would like to write dealing with Classical Acting for the Contemporary Actor (because I still haven't found one that really made sense or worked for me). Until then I will just hope to keep working and making discoveries. I do feel pretty exhausted day in and day out with this show and I could use some sleep, perchance to dream.

Anything else about the production, your performance or the Fresno theater scene you'd like to comment on?

Get involved, take a class at Cal Arts Academy in the arts or enroll in a course at FCC, go out and audition, send one of these theatre companies an email to see how they could use your help. Some of the students I teach at Ohio say that they always had wanted to try acting or being in a play and I know the same has to be true of residents in the Valley. My students may not be the next Oscar winner, but they know more about it, they feel like their are part of something and are happy that they tried it because they took the chance instead of sitting on the sidelines watching opportunity pass them by.

I am sure I may take some heat for some of the things I have said, but do not confuse my observations as a lack of support; I am in everyone's corner. I am only making these comments because this community means a lot to me: It's where I am from, it's where my family and friends are, and there could be someone out there who was like me when I was younger and I want it to be better for them. At any rate it means a lot to me and if it means anything to you, let's work to make it better. Let it grow. Let yourself be surprised by what could happen in 3-5 years. It may just me being selfish that when I am in town I might want to catch a play or do some theatre. I just hope it keeps moving forward and that all the support that the theatre community needs happens.