As the cast of this weekend’s production of “The Comedy of Errors” poured months into perfecting the complex language of a William Shakespeare play, one note from its student-director stood out.

“Push the sex,” junior Christi Liongson urged the actors.

When the 14th Grade Players present the Shakespearean slapstick Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights in the Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre, they hope to show audiences that sex jokes and potty humor transcend centuries.

“There’s an impression that reading Shakespeare is a highbrow, pretentious thing, but he’s got syphilis jokes going on,” sophomore Leah Holstein, who will play Antipholus of Ephesus, said. “There are some ridiculous, really lewd imagery. Any time there’s a sword, it’s so meant to be dirty.”

“The Comedy of Errors,” one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, tells a tale of mistaken identities with two sets of twins, and features plenty of puns and word play. Chaos and arrests ensue after Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant, Dromeo of Syracuse, arrive in Ephesus and run into their long-lost identical twins, Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromeo of Ephesus.

While theater companies around the world devote countless performances to Shakespeare’s classics, for a college audience especially, sex is the great equalizer.

“To make it work, you have to be willing to make a fool out of yourself. You need to gesture to certain parts of the body. We’re not going to offend anybody, but we’re definitely going to get a laugh from a college audience,” freshman Rebekah Meyer, who will play Dromeo of Syracuse, said.

The cast has not only contended with difficult language, but also an inconvenient rehearsal schedule. After starting rehearsals in November, holiday breaks and finals hurt chemistry and memorization, cast members said.

However, many actors said Skype, a video conferencing program, saved the day.

“Skype was a huge help. We’d call each other on Skype and run lines. I was in New Jersey, and I Skyped with our director Christi, who was in Hawaii,” freshman Andy Brown, who plays Antipholus of Syracuse, said.

Liongson said the cast was determined to stay in constant communication through the vacations, helping to ease the disruption in the rehearsal schedule.

“They would call me to run lines, and even if I was in the lobby for the dentist, I’d do it,” said Liongson.

Cast members will also try to execute the show’s physicality, which includes visual comedy and a sword fight, and required stage combat choreography.

The 14th Grade Players hope its spacious venue – the Betts Theatre, which usually houses the dance and theater department’s MainStage productions – will force each actor to perform bigger and better.

“It will serve as an energizer,” said Holstein.

The cast hopes that energy will help them express classic language for a modern audience, and present a show that may be a different Shakespeare than people know.

“It’s a light, fun play. It’s not ‘Macbeth.’ You’re not going to leave the play with a sense of gravitas and a perspective on the nature of man,” Meyer said. “It’s a little easier for an audience to grasp that isn’t familiar with the language. Hopefully, you’ll just be inspired to read more Shakespeare.”