On a small stage, three actors practiced a sword combat — slowly, then sooner. Behind them board operators ran a sound verify and a wardrobe assistant shook out costumes.

“That is the a part of theater you by no means get to see,” Rebecca Martínez stated.

Martínez was talking on Saturday within the southeast nook of Bryant Park. Behind her, the forged and crew of the Public Theater’s bilingual musical model of “The Comedy of Errors,” carried out in Spanish and English, completed their preshow rituals. Martínez, who tailored the manufacturing with Julián Mesri, can be the present’s director and choreographer. Sometimes, routines like these are carried out backstage, out of sight. However at Bryant Park, amid the birders, the vacationers and the library patrons, a backstage was not out there.

For over 60 years, the Public Theater has provided summer time Shakespeare in a single place: Central Park’s Delacorte Theater. This 12 months, the Delacorte is closed for renovations (it plans to reopen subsequent summer time, with “Twelfth Night”), so the Public has taken this free present to the streets, parks and plazas of town’s 5 boroughs.

This “Comedy of Errors” was seen final 12 months, as a manufacturing of the Public’s Mobile Unit, which brings high-energy, low-tech variations of Shakespeare to venues like libraries, correctional services and group facilities. The Unit travels mild, with a rug rather than a set, which permits a easy arrange and strike.

“Like, growth! Rug! Let’s go!” Martínez stated.

The 90-minute present now has extra furnishings and two vehicles to convey it. As an alternative to Shakespeare in the Park, it has been enhanced with extra actors, extra musicians, lighting for night performances and a raised stage. What used to take minutes to arrange can take as a lot as three hours.

I joined “The Comedy of Errors,” which runs by June 30, on its first Saturday. Just a little earlier than 10 a.m., the solar was excessive and the breeze was mellow. Fifteen crew members — twice as many as in a typical Cell Unit manufacturing — had been trundling dollies, street bins and ladders from a library loading dock towards the stage. Later, a freight elevator would give out, however for the second, the method was frighteningly environment friendly.

“Each place has a unique problem,” stated Luisa Sánchez Colón, the manufacturing stage supervisor. “Or a brand new discovery.”

Bryant Park had allowed the Public to go away the stage up in a single day, so this was an abbreviated model of the arrange. (Assembling the stage provides an hour or extra.) Whereas the crew, in pale blue shirts, busied themselves screwing in steps and attaching audio system, 10 entrance of home staff, in inexperienced shirts, organized 250 chairs on three sides of the stage. By 11:30, the canopies above the band, audio tools and check-in desk had been raised.

Praycious Wilson-Homosexual, the director of the Cell Unit, pushed a brush throughout the stage, sweeping off leaves and pollen. She had begun scouting for places final August, in search of venues with respectable accessibility (on-site loos, adjacency to public transport) and by desire, massive Spanish-speaking populations.

It could have been simpler, after all, to have staged the play on the Public’s downtown hub. “However the artists actually need to invite what is occurring on the streets of New York Metropolis into the lifetime of the present,” Wilson-Homosexual defined. “Sitting in a brick-and-mortar theater, you don’t get the identical expertise.”

Mesri, who can be the present’s composer, agreed. “The town finishes the present,” he stated. “You’re feeling town complement the soundtrack.”

The actors arrived at midday, and altered contained in the library. Then they walked exterior the place an viewers had already gathered. As a result of the present adjustments primarily based on environment and crowd, Martínez sought actors who might meet these challenges.

“We have now very deliberately humorous actors,” she stated, “they get enthusiastic about deepen the present primarily based on how they’re interacting with the viewers.”

The present started simply after 1 p.m. with a procession across the plaza. There have been bubbles, roving viewers members, divebombing pigeons, a bus that briefly despatched suggestions screeching by the wi-fi mics. The actors absorbed all of it.

“The town is a part of the tapestry of the present,” Gían Pérez, an actor, stated.

Then the present was over. After bowing and posing for selfies, the actors joined the crew in tidying away set items and folding canopies. “I like it,” Varín Ayala, an actor, stated. “In some other present, I’d go, ‘Ew, I don’t need to strike,’ however it’s part of the expertise.”

After lower than an hour, the set had been dismantled, the chairs held on racks and wheeled inside. After a quick assembly, the forged and crew had been launched. They might meet the subsequent afternoon for ice cream, then set it up once more.

“It’s important to have a certain quantity of ruggedness,” Martínez admitted. That permits the corporate to carry theater to individuals proper the place they reside, work and sightsee. That day, Martínez had introduced her husband to the present and her younger daughter, who had marched within the procession.

“The payoff,” she stated, “is with the ability to be in group.”