By Amy Zimmer
DNAinfo News Editor
UPPER EAST SIDE — The British are coming, and they're bringing a theater with them.
Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company packed 47 40-foot shipping containers with a replica of its home stage in Stratford-upon-Avon to stage five plays over six weeks in the Park Avenue Armory for this summer's Lincoln Center Festival.
The theater took nearly 9 months to manufacture in England and workers had a 15-day window of set-up in New York before the plays kick off on July 6 with "As You Like It" and run through Aug. 14 with "The Winter's Tale."
The containers carried 390 tons of steel with 19,000 bolts, nuts, washers, pins and clips; 975 seats; a stage, proscenium and band platform; roughly 450 costumes and 350 pairs of boots; 20 wigs, 15 hairpieces, 15 beards, 15 moustaches, five pairs of sideburns, two "joke" beards and one set of eyebrows; and 40 liters of blood, for the company's 41 actors and 21 musicians.
Most of the containers are being used in the armory as prop rooms, dressing rooms and a platform upon which the stage was built.
The Royal Shakespeare Company was still in the midst of construction inside the 55,000-square-foot armory — a drill hall at East 67th Street built in 1861 — during a press preview on Thursday.
"It is an extraordinary construction," Rebecca Robertson, the Armory's president and executive producer, said. "Where else in New York City can you see an Elizabethan theater built inside another building?"
Just as in their home theater, the Royal Shakespeare Company has built a thrust stage with the audience viewing from three sides and the farthest seat from the stage a mere 49 feet away.
"They have built a very intimate theater in this vast drill hall," Robertson said.
Michael Boyd, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, wants audience members to wave to each other and interact in a way that's different from being in a movie theater.
"I hope you'll see the performers and the lady in the green coat on the other side of the stage," he said.
The actors, who have been working together for years, have been looking forward to playing the five works in New York, Boyd said, which also include "Romeo and Juliet," "King Lear," and "Julius Caesar."
Theater officials did not disclose how much the construction cost.
The residency is a co-production of Lincoln Center Festival and the Armory with support from Ohio State University, which received a major donation for the company. The performances are part of the Lincoln Center Festival's overall budget, which has cost up to $12 million in years past.
The Armory has partnered with the company on an educational program that will reach 800 young people from the ages of 8 to 14 from underserved New York communities.
"Asking a child to analyze Shakespeare doesn't compare to having that child perform it," Boyd said. "Ask them to play Bottom [from a "Midsummer Night's Dream"] or Tubal [from "Merchant of Venice"] or Juliet, not only do they understand better, but they remember it."
While ticket prices range from $32 to $200, there will also be a lottery for $25 tickets each week.
