Uncovering Shakespeare, Celina Record

`Tea & Soda Pop’ attempts to uncover the real Shakespeare Lisa Ferguson, lferguson@starlocalmedia.com May 4, 2016 Here’s a bit of trivia: There was no tea in England during William Shakespeare’s lifetime. It is a fact that Shelby Cranfill said she was surprised to learn, especially since she’s a big fan of The Bard. “You couldn’t have had tea with Shakespeare until a hundred years after he was dead,” explains the Collinsville playwright. “The point is, there’s so much mythology around Shakespeare, there’s so many assumptions,” she said. In honor of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death on April 23, 1616, Cranfill penned “Tea & Soda Pop With Shakespeare?: A Playwright’s Perspective on the Working Will.” Cranfill’s Family Friendly Productions company staged the production in segments in April at the Pilot Point Opera House, at 110 S. Washington St. in Pilot Point. “Tea & Soda Pop with Shakespeare?” wasn't as much a play as it was a “dramatic presentation,” Cranfill said. Even the title nods to the many misconceptions surrounding The Bard and his work. “People assume that you (could have had) tea with Shakespeare. No. You need to understand the history,” Cranfill said. Otherwise, “You’re going to make assumptions that aren’t correct.” The show’s cast was comprised of members of Pilot Point youth theatre ensemble, most aged 3-18, who read from scripts onstage while performing as some of Shakespeare’s most noted characters. “They’re short parts and they’re small, but they’re getting real taste” of Shakespeare’s work, she said. "We’ve been able to bring it down to them.” However, “Tea & Soda Pop with Shakespeare?” was intended to appeal to audiences of all ages. The show was “a talk about Shakespeare, but [the actors] play characters and they talk about who they are and they talk about each other,” she said. Cranfill compared it to an old-fashioned “dramatic radio play … except you see them act things out.” This is the sixth show starring children that Family Friendly Productions, which Cranfill founded in 2012, has staged at the opera house. In December the company staged “It Happened One Knight,” a World War II-era musical comedy which Cranfill wrote and directed. She also penned its musical score. A former ad agency executive, Cranfill years ago began writing plays for children involved with Denton-area homeschool co-ops to perform. “I learned to direct just because I wrote the stuff and I knew what I wanted to see, so I learned over the years how to tell the kids what to do” onstage, she explained. The show featured short scenes that Cranfill edited from Shakespeare classics “The Merchant of Venice,” “As You Like It” and ‘Much Ado About Nothing.” “We’re not looking at the characters so much as we’re looking at Shakespeare,” she explained. “It’s aimed at Shakespeare (as) the working dramatist, and Shakespeare (as) the guy who was just one of the guys in Lord Chamberlin’s Men and The King’s Men … and what the theatres were like and what it was like to be a [performer] in those days. “It’s history and it’s culture,” Cranfill said. “It’s everything [except] let’s sit down and study `Hamlet.’” Follow the Celina Record on Twitter @celinarecord.