Visiting Students Shake Up Shakespeare
|
|
Chris Reed, a senior at Cumberland Regional High School, had the chance to shine at his soon-to-be new performance venue. Reed, who will be a freshman at Rider University in the fall as an acting scholar, performed an abridged version, along with his classmates, of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It in the Yvonne Theater on the Lawrenceville campus on Thursday, May 22.
It was all part of the second annual Shakesperience: NJ Festival, hosted by Rider, in partnership with the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. Major funding for this festival was provided by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. More than 250 middle and high school students from nine schools throughout the state performed pieces of William Shakespeare plays. The performances enticed roaring applause and hoots of laughter as the students used Shakespearean language, as well as their own unique interpretations, to bring the Elizabethan playwright’s words to life.
“There is nothing like getting kids to experience Shakespeare,” said program coordinator Kathleen Pierce, associate professor of Graduate Education at Rider. “They get so much more out of it than they do by simply reading the plays in the classroom.”
Reed, who played Orlando in the Thursday performance, said what he likes about Shakespeare is that the works never get old. “Even now, a few hundred years later, people still appreciate Shakespeare,” Reed said. “The fact that we can still perform his work and appreciate it is unbelievable.”
Jill Vaughn, a recent graduate of the Teacher’s Certification Program at Rider, volunteered at the festival by guiding the students throughout the day and making sure they know what to do during the performances. Vaughn said the festival gives students a deeper understanding of The Bard.
“It’s not a competition. It’s a celebration of learning,” Vaughn said. “It’s amazing what the students came up with in their own interpretations. They put their own spin to it.”
Donning slicked-back hair, tennis shoes, colored shirts and poodle skirts, students from Kinnelon High School put a ’50s-style Grease spin to Much Ado About Nothing. Sara Schineller, a senior who played Beatrice, said the class did not want to perform a classical Shakespeare piece. The ’50s-style Grease theme parallels the play’s storyline, which features a love story and a conflict between good and bad, said Schineller. Adding the twist gave the class more freedom and an understanding of the text.
It took the Kinnelon students about two months of afterschool practices to prepare for the festival. Julia Cohen, a senior who played Margaret, said this was her first time performing a Shakespeare play. For Cohen, learning her lines involved a lot of rereading and memorizing.
Sue Barry, a teacher from Clearview Regional High School, said she taught her two Shakespeare Studies classes to approach Shakespeare as a foreign language. The classes prepared for roadhouse renditions of Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet for six weeks. The students looked for meanings and used rhythm and meter as clues to know how to speak the language.
“Once they have a sense for who the character is, then they know what the lines mean and it’s coming from their gut,” said Barry, whose participating students ranged from special-education to advanced-placement level.
Barry said the program is beneficial to the students. “They need to know that there are other people doing Shakespeare, and there are many ways of performing and seeing Shakespeare,” Barry said. “That’s the value of this program – that they can come and do Shakespeare.”
The other participating schools included South Brunswick High School, Woodglen School, The Pennington School, Torah Academy of Bergen County and Robbinsville High School. Students who attended Rosa International Middle School last year also performed as the Willfully Yours, South Jersey Shakespearean Players.
Submitted on May 27, 2008
