Inner thespian found in trip around board

By Marieke Van der Vaart,

age 16

Home-schooled, Annandale

“To be Richard Burbage, or not to be Richard Burbage, that is the question,” at least in the first round of the board game The Play’s the Thing, for two to four players.

Ever wonder what the theater process was like in Shakespeare’s day? Curious about who might have been the first actors to perform Shakespeare’s plays? Then I have a game for you.

Starting as a novice, apprentice or scholar, you pick a famous actor of Shakespeare’s original company and go around the board, drawing cards with key points and quotations from the starting-card-pack plays: “Julius Caesar,” “Romeo and Juliet” and “Hamlet.”

Trying to pick a handful of cards for a specific scene from one of these plays, everyone races to get a scene “performed.” Landing on different squares reveals the theater process in the meantime: Besides “performing” parts of scenes, you will be tested on information about plays, declaim lines and duel with other actors. Edward Alleyn, the most famous actor in Elizabethan England, challenged me (jealous, no doubt, of my incredible talent and skill).

Every player strives to win a rave review and prove his or her Shakespearean prowess.

Although you may never get to travel to the Globe Theatre, glimpses of Elizabethan theater and one of its finest playwrights are yours with just a few hours and friends to play The Play’s the Thing.

For teenage and adult Shakespeare fans, The Play’s the Thing is an engaging way to spend two or three hours.