May 2025: Third Thursday Jamestown Preview – Madness Most Discreet

For the past 12+ years, Third Thursday Jamestown has been primarily known for hosting musical acts once a month at Winter Garden Plaza. In 2024, the mold was completely broken when theatre group Madness Most Discreet kicked off the season with two 45-minute performances of their take on Shakespeare. The performances were top notch. The crowd loved it. It was a fabulous night with four actors showcasing their extraordinary talents. What made this show so interesting, is that the four actors never knew which role they will be playing. An audience member was invited up to the performance area to spin a wheel which determined which character each actor would portray. It was pretty amazing.

Thanks to the members of Madness Most Discreet, here’s a little preview of Thursday, May 15th performance at Winter Garden Plaza in Jamestown.

What is Madness Most Discreet? 

Madness Most Discreet is a four-person performance collective dedicated to offering free Shakespeare to all. Our hallmark is this: one play, four actors, endless possibilities. In each of our shows, every actor learns the entire script, and the audience chooses who plays which part. We try to blur the lines between artist and spectator, inviting the community to make art with us.

Tell us about the actors in your upcoming presentation “Moonlight Revels” – where are they from? Backgrounds? 

The company is made up of Rusty Allen, Emily Drew, Matt McWilliams, and Julie Reed. Rusty lives in Chicago, Emily is a Jamestown resident, and Matt and Julie are based in New York City. We met over 10 years ago while doing summer Shakespeare in New Hampshire. This is where we were inspired to make theatre that is free, fun, and reflective of the world we live in. This last part is important – we all have different backgrounds, different lives outside the company. We want our work to be as multifaceted as we are.

Your four-person group switches roles for each performance, therefore no two shows are alike. Give us the background on why that is? It certainly must be challenging for a person to learn the dialogue for each character? 

We definitely haven’t made things easy for ourselves! And every time we start a new project we think, “Can we really do this? Can we really memorize every part?” We are always surprised when the answer is yes. We think the reason we’re able to do it is that it’s so true to our mission. We tempt audiences to find themselves in every character, in much the way we do, regardless of gender, class, status, or political power. It excites us that audiences may see one actor tackle different roles across multiple performances – how does that challenge the audience’s perceptions of that actor? How might watching different actors interpret the same role challenge their perceptions of the character? And how might this challenge their ideas about themselves and the people around them? In addition to entertaining people, we want audiences to feel inspired, or maybe just to see the world a bit differently when they leave our show. 

What draws your group towards Shakespeare?

Shakespeare’s plays capture just about every emotion out there – ecstatic joy, heart-plummeting despair, crippling anxiety; if you’ve felt it, Shakespeare wrote about it; his characters are so recognizable. We find that when Shakespeare’s words are spoken by unexpected bodies, the way they often are in our shows, their meaning evolves in powerful ways. What you realize when you see a man playing a damsel in distress or a non-binary person playing the king of the fairies is that Shakespeare’s ideas are universal. His plays, in all their truth and beauty, belong to all of us. 

After viewing the performance, what do you hope the audiences will take with them by viewing this upcoming performance? It’s certainly a good thing for Jamestown. 

We want people to enjoy theater without worrying about the cost. We offer our shows free of charge because it’s important that Jamestown has access to the classics. The joy and the laughter and the romance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” belong to everyone. We want you to laugh with us, and to help us make something poignant along the way. 

Third Thursday Jamestown is made possible through: Jamestown Renaissance Corporation, Gebbie Foundation, Live CHQ, SitlerHQ and MegaSound.