A midsummer night's team
Theater group loyal to South Shore
They have one foot firmly planted in Duxbury, and the other planted almost as firmly in Boston, but they aren't about to shake the feel of sand between their toes.
The members of the up-and-coming Gurnet Theatre Project say they'll never completely abandon the South Shore for the glitzier theater scene in the city.
The group's annual free summer outdoor show - "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged" - opens Thursday and runs through Sunday at the Myles Standish Monument State Reservation in Duxbury.
The youthful troupe - most members are in their early to mid-20s, and many are graduates of Duxbury High - will then move to Boston for three free performances at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre.
"Duxbury is in our name and it's where we began," said theater cofounder and artistic director Brian C. Fahey of Duxbury, 27, referring to "Gurnet," which is the headland area of Duxbury Beach. "We'll always keep the local theater going. Many of our supporters and benefactors are here, and the Monument is such a fun venue, a gorgeous spot right on the water."
"The community has just been so supportive in many ways, including providing rehearsal space," said Kristen Schnibbe, 23, who directs "Complete Works."
Schnibbe has been rehearsing the current production in Duxbury and Boston to accommodate actors from both Boston and the South Shore and to make the transfer from Duxbury to the Boston stage as seamless as possible.
If the theater has presented a preponderance of works by the Bard in recent summers, there's good reason. "I'm a Shakespeare geek," said Schnibbe, a graduate of the theater program at Skidmore College with a concentration in directing.
"The outdoor setting is perfect for many of Shakespeare's plays," she said, including the company's performances the past two summers of "As You Like It" and "Much Ado About Nothing."
Schnibbe said she looks for something funny and family-friendly for the group's summer show, because on a warm summer's night there can be many distractions for both the actors and the audience. "Complete Works," for example, is an irreverent, fast-paced romp through all 37 of Shakespeare's plays in just 97 minutes.
Schnibbe is a teacher in North Carolina during the school year and is working on a master's degree in education; she comes home in the summer to visit and direct. Fahey is a Northeastern University grad now at the University of Texas in Austin. Both, along with cofounder Michelle Hatfield, an alumna of Smith College, went to Duxbury High.
Also Duxbury alums are cast members Abbe Schnibbe, an incoming freshman at the University of Vermont, and Gillian Green, who is at NYU.
The cast also includes Emerson alumnus Mike Bash, from Red Bank, N.J.; Alex Frost, from Westwood, a student at Skidmore; Kathleen McGovern of Norwell, an alumna of Goucher College; Victor Shopov, from Rochester, N.Y., an Emerson grad; Michael Duncan Smith, from Westford and UMass-Dartmouth; and Giselle Ty, a Houston native and graduate of
The company is flush from a warm reception from critics of its recent production of Adam Rapp's "Essential Self-Defense," directed by Fahey at the Boston Center for the Arts.
Rapp's play, which includes scenes in a karaoke bar and a roller-skating dream sequence, "created some challenges for us," said Fahey with a chuckle.
Fahey cofounded the company with Hatfield in the winter of 2005; it staged its first outdoor production in the summer of 2005, Tony Kushner's translation of Pierre Corneille's "The Illusion."
After workshopping "Waiting for Godot" in Duxbury in the fall of 2005, the company made its first foray into Boston with a new version of August Strindberg's "Miss Julie," which debuted at the Boston Center for the Arts but later made its way to the Duxbury Performing Arts Center. It was nominated for a Gold Star Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
The company has now settled into a season that includes two shows in Boston and the annual outdoor show in Duxbury. The Boston premiere of Neil LaBute's "Some Girls," to be directed by Brett Marks, will mark the company's fourth Boston show in January 2009.
Fahey said the troupe is committed to progressive and provocative works and to reaching out to a young audience, but is also wary about being pigeonholed as "the company that does those shows about young people." It has presented such works as Bert V. Royal's "Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead" and Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth."
In troubled times, with a sour economy and a divisive war going on, the company has another mission, said Kristen Schnibbe.
"We try to give people entertainment that provides hope."
Rich Fahey can be reached at faheywrite@yahoo.com. 
