By NICOLE GALLAND

For people who are scared (or uninterested) in the work of William Shakespeare, the Vineyard is a good place to get over it. The Vineyard Playhouse’s summer Shakespeare in the Amphitheatre is as playful and robust as anything on Nickelodeon, and in the off-season, Shakespeare for the Masses makes the Bard seem as accessible as an HBO series.

But still there are times when Shakespeare’s language or story can confuse the viewer, and unlike TiVo, it’s normally impossible to stop the action and ask an expert, “Um what is going on here?”

That rare opportunity presents itself this Thursday and Friday evenings at Featherstone Center for the Arts. Boston’s acclaimed Actor’s Shakespeare Project will be performing scenes from Cymbeline, one of Shakespeare’s rarely produced plays. Between scenes, the actors will do something almost unheard of: They will literally stop the show, sit on the lip of the stage, and take questions from the audience about what just happened. Or, for that matter, literally any other Shakespeare question the audience may have. On hand to help satisfy people’s curiosity or clear up their confusion will be ASP’s artistic director, Allyn Burrows, as well as American theatre luminary Robert Brustein.

This is the second year Actor’s Shakespeare Project has come to Featherstone; last year they brought Othello. Brooke Hardman Ditchfield is both an ASP company member and the artistic director of ArtFarm Enterprises, the Vineyard’s newest theatre company. It is her relationship to the two theatres that gives Vineyard audiences this unique opportunity to talk back to the Bard.

And there will be plenty of impetus to talk back. The story of Cymbeline is cheerfully, unapologetically convoluted; it has been known to leave the actors performing it a little breathless, trying to keep up with the story. If you took most of the feature-length animated Disney movies, combined them with the Indiana Jones canon, and threw in a few graphic novels, you might have as much action and dramatic plot points as Shakespeare came up with in this single play. And far from evoking the brooding brow of Laurence Olivier, the tone of Cymbeline is more likely to evoke, say, Shrek.

Even a fleeting attempt at a synopsis of Cymbeline is futile; it would be easier to encapsulate The Lord of the Rings. At its heart, however, the story is an action-packed romance. A princess in love with a commoner resists the power of her royal father and evil stepmother, who would have her wed her evil stepbrother. Her resistance, and her lover’s banishment, spark a series of events involving nearly every archetype that later appears in fairy tales and fantasy novels. If you’ve ever had a favorite bedtime story, you will find its villains or its heroes, or maybe both, in Cymbeline.

And you can ask about them. You can ask anything about them. Ask the actors how they memorized their lines, or why they chose to speak a certain way; ask the director why an actor was cast for a specific role; ask why Elizabethan nobles wore ruffs around their necks; ask why Shakespeare decided to write such a deliciously overstuffed fairy tale when he could be writing, for example, Hamlet Two.

So bring a picnic dinner and something comfortable to sit on. The show is family-friendly and runs about an hour. You may continue to pester the cast, company and hosts at a reception following the show both nights.

Conversations with Cymbeline, by the Actor’s Shakespeare Project and brought to the Vineyard by ArtFarm, will be performed Thursday, August 11 and Friday, August 12 at 7 p.m. at the outdoor stage at Featherstone Center for the Arts.

Admission $20 for adults, $15 for seniors and students.

Nicole Galland is affiliated with ArtFarm and a cofounder of Shakespeare for the Masses.