Written by Sophia

Some nights, everything just clicks.

I don’t think I realized that was going to happen when we first arrived at the programs building on Tuesday. It was just after 6:00, and only a handful of ensemble members had gathered. We chatted about other programs, shared stories, and waited for the rest of the group to arrive. One participant asked me what our question of the day was, and I told her we were asking everyone to reflect on when they first felt like they belonged in the ensemble.

“After the first [Shakespeare] show I felt like we’re a family,” she told me.

I didn’t know it yet, but that question would shape the entire evening.

When most of the group left for dinner, we began talking with the two ensemble members who remained. One recalled knowing so much about SIP from her bunkie that she felt like she belonged before she ever attended a session. “When I saw the stage I said, ‘Honey I’m home!’ I felt it immediately.”

The other laughed as she remembered her first experience. “The second I got here I was like ‘I’m about to act up.’ I felt at home as soon as I got here. I didn’t have the courage but you all were so welcoming. I was scaredy.”

As more members returned, the conversation grew. Some described belonging as something they felt immediately, while others remembered specific moments when they finally felt accepted. For one participant, it was the applause and encouragement after her first performance of The Comedy of Errors. For another, it was simply continuing to show up: “The second or third time. Coming back and showing up. My attendance made me feel like I belonged.”

One participant remembered sharing her poetry and discovering that even her darker writing was welcomed. Another recalled wanting to quit and being encouraged to stay.

But not everyone felt the same way.

“I don’t feel it yet,” one of the new ensemble members admitted. “But I read and you guys snapped for me and that felt great. Games make me feel connected but it’s hard when we read because you all are so good.”

A veteran participant immediately agreed: “We get intimidated when new people like you are so good.”

I appreciated that honesty. It’s easy to talk about the ensemble as a welcoming space, but belonging isn’t something we can simply declare on someone’s behalf. It has to be experienced. It develops through relationships, through encouragement, through taking risks, and sometimes through returning to a room even when you aren’t entirely sure you fit.

After our conversation, I suggested that we warm up, play a game, and finish Act One of King Lear. Everyone agreed. We got on our feet for a full-body warm-up, and Kyle walked the ensemble through one of my favorite games, “Wah!”

Within minutes, the energy in the room had changed.

People were laughing, moving, making mistakes, and enjoying themselves. The hesitancy that sometimes accompanies our script work seemed to disappear. We were simply playing together.

When we finally sat down to tackle Act 1, Scene 5, that energy came with us.

We began by piecing together everything that had happened so far. Kyle referred to Cordelia as “Homegirl,” and the group jumped in with details about Lear’s decisions, his daughters, and the increasingly disastrous consequences of dividing his kingdom. Then we read the scene.

Almost immediately, the ensemble was drawn to the Fool.

“The Fool is making all the sense. He calls it how he sees it,” one member observed.

“He knows Regan will be the same as Goneril,” another added.

Someone else described Lear as a man who is “watching his life slip through his fingers.”

The Fool fascinated us because he seemed to understand what Lear couldn’t – or wouldn’t – see. He speaks in riddles, jokes, and insults, but underneath the humor is an uncomfortable truth. Lear has made an enormous mistake, and the Fool may be one of the only people willing to tell him so – without getting exiled for it like Cordelia and Kent.

As we unpacked the scene, a participant connected the Fool’s reference to crab apples to her own experience feeding them to pigs. Suddenly, the ensemble was considering whether the Fool was essentially calling Goneril and Regan pig food. Shakespeare’s language had become something we could laugh about, debate, and recognize.

The conversation gradually moved beyond the play.

I shared that I often feel like the Cordelia of my own family. I’ve had experiences where I called attention to something I believed was wrong and felt that I was treated worse for saying it. I wanted to see whether the ensemble recognized that dynamic in their own lives, and they did.

One member reflected on how society seems increasingly accepting of cruelty, particularly through social media. “I believe in treating people how you want to be treated, not how they treated you,” she said.

Another suggested, “People are jaded and bitter because of their experience.”

Kyle brought our conversation back to King Lear, pointing out how many of the characters are being stripped of the identities and positions that once defined them. In different ways, Lear, Cordelia, Kent, and others are being forced to confront who they are without the power, status, or relationships they previously relied upon.

Stefania suggested that Lear is experiencing an ego death.

And one ensemble member summed up Cordelia’s refusal to fit into her father’s expectations: “Cordelia destroys the box.”

I loved that interpretation. Lear has constructed a world in which everyone has a role to play, and Cordelia refuses to perform hers. She doesn’t give him the answer he wants. She doesn’t participate in the competition he has created. She challenges the rules of his world simply by refusing to follow them.

As we continued exploring the Fool, we began imagining how this relationship might eventually look onstage. Could the Fool be a manifestation of Lear’s subconscious? Could the character be an offstage voice? Or should the Fool be a traditional jester, moving playfully around the king?

One ensemble member jumped up and began dancing around the circle, demonstrating how she imagined the Fool moving. Others preferred a more traditional interpretation. We talked about the possibilities, knowing that the actor who eventually takes on the role will have the freedom to explore those choices.

Then Kyle asked a question: Had anyone ever tried to convince someone of something when that person simply wouldn’t listen?

“It falls on deaf ears,” one member responded.

“He’s not listening. We don’t listen to good advice. Especially addicts,” another offered.

“The Fool’s on the outside. Like when you see a relationship from the outside.”

“King Lear looks at the Fool like he’s a fool.”

The ensemble began making connections between Lear’s stubbornness and experiences with addiction, relationships, parenting, and aging. One participant offered a different perspective from the addiction comparison, describing how difficult it can be to watch someone you love make decisions that you know will hurt them.

“Think of a parent and child,” she said. “They’re heading for hurt and pain but they don’t listen. Society thinks old people are useless. History repeats itself cause no one listens. Everything in life is like this. Everyone thinks they know what they know.”

We talked about the helplessness of watching someone make a mistake you can see coming. Kyle and another participant compared the first act to watching a car crash in slow motion.

Then, in the middle of our conversation, someone said something that seemed to bring all of these ideas together:

“There’s power in playing the Fool.”

It’s such an interesting contradiction. The Fool is the character everyone is allowed to laugh at, but he may also be the one who understands the situation most clearly. His humor gives him permission to say things that other characters cannot. He appears powerless, yet his perspective gives him a kind of authority that Lear, despite being king, seems to have lost.

Eventually, we got the scene on its feet.

After the first attempt, I asked the ensemble how it felt.

“I felt great,” the participant who read Lear announced. “I felt like a dumbass.”

The group was having so much fun that they wanted to do the scene again.

One ensemble member encouraged another to try Lear. I joined in the encouragement, but she wasn’t ready to take the role that night. There will be another opportunity.

We cast the scene again, and this time another participant took on a larger role than she was accustomed to. I was especially excited to see members who typically gravitate toward smaller parts beginning to stretch themselves.

Afterward, the ensemble member who read Lear reflected, “It felt different. I’m used to my one liners.”

The participant who tried the Fool for the first time shared, “When you read the Fool you become that mindset.”

And as we returned to Lear’s recognition that he had wronged Cordelia, an ensemble member offered her own understanding of Cordelia’s love: “I don’t need to tell you I love you, I’ve shown you I love you.”

The scene had come full circle. We began with the Fool trying to make Lear recognize the truth, and ended with the ensemble reflecting on the difference between expressing love and demonstrating it.

By the time we gathered for our closing ring, we had gone a few minutes past eight. No one seemed particularly eager to leave. One participant shared how much she was enjoying the play and how deeply she had begun studying it. Another compared the way King Lear unfolds to Play-Doh, stretching further and further as we explore it.

I left feeling that this was the best session we’ve had so far this season.

It wasn’t because we covered an extraordinary amount of text. We finished just one scene. It wasn’t because everyone agreed or because every person suddenly felt completely comfortable. In fact, the evening began with someone telling us she still wasn’t sure she belonged.

It was because we played. We listened. We challenged each other. We laughed at Shakespeare and found ourselves in it. We moved from talking about belonging to actively practicing what it means to be an ensemble.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, we discovered that there really is power in playing the Fool.

Sometimes the most meaningful thing we can do in theatre is risk looking a little ridiculous, trust the people around us, and say something true.

I think we’re beginning to find our way there together.