Opening night of Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood was a day filled with emotions for the cast. Several cast members were at the theatre from early in the morning and were not able to leave until clean up after the play. But nevertheless, these actors were thankful to be a part of such a production and were thrilled with the way that opening night went.
“Nerves were a very big factor coming into today,” said Landon Williams, the actor who portrayed both Prince John and King Richard. “Because there are some people here that I have never gotten to do a show with before.”
The show began before the play started. The Sheriff of Nottingham [played by Frank Hinerman] and Sir Guy of Gisbourne [played by Brian Hence] came on stage and began to heckle the crowd as a time filler to quench some of the awkwardness for any stragglers who might be showing up late.
“I was worried at the very beginning,” Says Hinerman. “But it turned out to be incredible!”

The entire cast after the show was absolutely thrilled with how the show went. They felt that while there needed to be improvements made with broken props, opening night was a success.
“I think the crowd, since it was opening night, was mostly our friends and family.” Said Marcus Cote, who portrayed Little John. “I feel like they were very forgiving and happy to be here, and I really enjoyed that.”
The feeling amongst the cast was shared excitement to be doing this show together. Cote said that they have really come together as a group and that early on there was a lot of animosity and tension, but he felt they had done a fantastic job of overcoming that and bonding and growing together.
Hence said that while opening night was amazing, there was still a lot of things they had to work on. Being the veteran in the cast, Hence said that there still some issues that needed to be worked out. Primarily finding out how to keep the props working. There were numerous props that broke and while this caused laughter among the cast, they also admitted that they needed to learn to manage the props because there were still four more shows to put on.
“I want to work on not killing myself by the end of this,” Hinerman said. “I fall a lot!”
Upon hearing this, both Williams and Hence responded by saying they do too. There were lots of laughter as the cast began to talk about how physically draining certain parts of the show were.
A group of actors with a newfound bond, that will not be as easily broken as props, are ready to march on and make their other performances as successful as the first one.

Story and photo by Madison Richardson