I'm Tracci Dial with Northwest Public Broadcasting's Weekly News Now.

This week, we're doing a community spotlight.

The Rude Mechanicals are an incredible theater group.

On its website, it says the mission is to inspire a community where innovative, high quality theater is celebrated and historical barriers to participation are eliminated.

We have Cyndi Kimmel here.

She's the artistic director of the Rude Mechanicals.

Cyndi, tell me a little bit about the group.

Yeah, I'd love to.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to have this conversation.

We are the Rude Mechanicals.

Our name comes from Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, where the Rude Mechanicals were a ragtag group of actors, people from the community that just got together and put on a show.

So that's what we do.

We do Shakespeare inspired and Shakespeare shows, but not just Shakespeare, like I say, Shakespeare inspired or Shakespeare adjacent We do a Christmas Carol stage reading every year, and this summer we're going to be working on a newer piece.

It's called Equivocation, and it's a contemporary play written around the idea of what if Shakespeare were there for the Gunpowder Plot and wrote about it.

So it's more modern, but still set in the 1600s or so England political thriller.

So we are also working on a bilingual Spanish language production as well as a piece by a Mexican playwright.

So yeah, like I said, we don't just do Shakespeare.

We try to do, you know, 1 to 2 Shakespeare shows a year, but we like to do as many different works that align with that mission as we can.

Certainly.

And the neat thing is people of all ages, all skill levels, all interests are invited to be part of it, right?

Yes.

Yes.

We welcome anybody and everybody.

You don't have to have an extensive theater resumé or any experience at all.

If you just want to come on down and learn, you can be involved at your pace, at your level.

We get a lot of people that come and audition for us and have never done a show before, or if they don't want to act, they want to learn more about the tech side, right?

Like doing props or costumes or things like that.

So, we want anybody and everybody.

That's what Shakespeare's company and plays are about.

It's for the people, right?

By the people.

So we really want to work with our community in producing the shows.

You guys do a great job.

Very quickly, The Rude Mechanicals, a 501C3, and you take help in any way, shape or form and let people get involved, right?

Yes.

If you want to check out our website RMTheatre.org, we are always looking for volunteers to help in any way.

Perfect.

Thank you so much for joining us Yeah, thank you.