Before I got
a chance to even teach Shakespeare again in school, I was asked to be a dramaturge
and acting coach as Maeser prepared to go down to Cedar City for the annual high
school Shakespeare Competition. The Competition ran during the first weekend of
October and involved the high school students giving different renditions of
monologues, duo- and trio-scenes, and an ensemble. The drama teacher, Cam
Cahoon, always asked Justin for additional insights and help to get the
students ready for the Competition. This year, I was asked to help.
I had heard
about the Competition before; my in-laws had gone to see Merchant of Venice the year before and had mentioned it. The idea
of going down to see a play and help the students was exciting for me, and,
since my wife could go down with me, I decided to start helping out.
The two or so
weeks before we left, I spent hours after school working with one of the
students on her speech as Hermione from The
Winter's Tale. We discussed projection, blocking, context, pronunciation,
and emotion--in other words, things about which I knew practically nothing.
Nevertheless, having an adult who "knew Shakespeare" (whatever that
means) gave her confidence and she went on to perform splendidly.
The
Competition is a unique thing in and of itself. Hundreds of high school
students bus into Cedar City for a weekend in which the entire focus is
Shakespeare. Most of the kids are drama students, and so it's less about the
Bard and more about the stage. Nevertheless, they get a genuinely theatrical
experience, in more than just watching the professional play that they do the
night before the competition begins.
Once there, I
watch costumers, coaches, directors, tech crews, and performers all vie to
outperform others in their session in front of professional actors who
adjudicate the monologues and duo/trio scenes. Ensembles, with upwards of
thirty or forty students, crowd stages with boisterous youths who belt out
iambic pentameter with as much grace as they can muster, each trying to
interpret and understand what they're saying. Most of the time, they know what
they're doing.
Of course,
there's no one who can approach the stage without coming up against William
Shakespeare. Much like Freud in psychoanalysis, Shakespeare is the definition
of the Western stage; anyone who wants to tackle drama has to either embrace or
go around him--but no one can ignore him.
I think it's
worthwhile that the students experience Shakespeare in a more personal way.
He's on the tongue--that is, the accept of reading him provides only one access
to the work. Seeing it performed puts you closer; it's how Shakespeare first
gained any notoriety at all, of course. But it's putting the words in the mind
and then the mouth that really changes you.
Part of this
is a coming home. A disproportionate amount of effort is put into trying to
convince people that Shakespeare has molded the language we have today. This is
true, but only in terms of a per capita contribution. Many of the words he
invented never stuck, and some were surely others', but it wasn't recorded, so
he gets credit for what he'd heard around London. Additionally, the thousands
he contributed, in comparison to how robust and enormous our language is--with
its millions of words, permutations, dialects, and accents--he's a mere drop in
the bucket. Despite all of this, there's something familiar and comfortable
about experiencing Shakespeare orally. To see the origins of "in a
nutshell", "heart on my sleeve", and "in a pickle" is
to see the beginnings of modern thought--the beginnings of a star. Discovering
for yourself the creation of the familiar has a reassuring effect, and I like
to think that the Shakespeare Competition helps provide that.
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