Merely Players

“All the world’s a stage,
and all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
and one man in his time plays many parts.”

-William Shakespeare
(from “As You Like It”)

Merely Players, devised and performed by Barry Morse

In his career, Barry Morse performed Merely Players live in cities throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom from 1959 to 2004. Barry played over a dozen separate characters, three of them women, performed two musical numbers, and always left the audience wanting more. His tour de force presentation examined the lives of a series of actors and others from Elizabethan times up to the present. From moving and heartfelt to comedic, Merely Players literally ran the gamut of human emotion. It also included several vignettes from the life and career of “mere player” himself, Barry Morse.

Looking for a stage piece that he could perform for benefits and fundraisers, Barry in 1959 debuted Merely Players on stage for the first time in Boston, Massachusetts. He later performed the show in New York in 1965 (during the height of The Fugitive craze) and in other venues for various causes and concerns, as well as for fundraising for local and repertory theatre companies in the U.S. and Canada. However, Merely Players in its current form coalesced in 1986 when Barry decided to use the piece on a nationwide tour of Canada to raise both publicity and funds for the Performing Arts Lodges of Canada, retirement centres for performers – actors, singers, dancers, and others – connected to the performing arts. In the 1990s and into the 21^st century, Barry performed the show on a number of occasions to raise both funds and awareness for several Parkinson’s disease treatment and research organizations, The Royal Theatrical Fund, and other causes.