Actors from Ashland open students’ eyes to
Shakespeare’s genius
By Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
The play is the thing wherein actors might catch the interest of high school students.
That was the muse behind a visit by two actors from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival of Ashland, Wayne Carr and Chris Albright, who spent three days last week working with high school students and performing for the public a show designed to bring William Shakespeare’s work to life in a way relevant to modern students and audiences.
Carr and Albright spent Nov. 13-15 at Sweet Home High School conducting workshops with language arts students. A performance on Nov. 14 included portions of Shakespeaere’s “Taming of the Shrew,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “King Lear” and “Cymbeline,” combined with bits from other plays, poetry and short stories and the sword fight between the Dread Pirate Roberts and Inigo Montoya from “The Princess Bride.”
Chris Albright, right, works with students on a passage from “King Lear” during a workshop at Sweet Home High School.
The performance focused on a central Shakespearean theme, “Live and Deal with Others Better.”
“There’s humor in this,” Albright told students during a workshop on Thursday. “There’s insult after insult after insult. It’s ridiculous.”
The insults in this case, a passage from “King Lear,” were in a list, something Shakespeare enjoyed using as a rhetorical device, Albright said. The thoughts in lists like it just keep getting bigger, working like a rhetorical ladder.
The actors fuse their Shakespeare with a contemporary flair to help expose students at rural schools to high-level acting and Shakespeare, said language arts teacher Deborah Handman. This is the second of three years of the program. Next year, the festival will host a two-day program for about 40 Sweet Home High School students, who will visit the backstage, see a couple of plays and attend workshops with actors.
“To be honest, I didn’t always like (Shakespeare),” Carr said during the Nov. 14 performance in the high school auditorium. “I had a block with the language.”
The two actors tried to demonstrate how Shakespeare was just a person who wrote about other people, with themes that are relevant to everyone, Albright said.
During the workshop, Albright asked students why they think Shakespeare retains so much relevance today. The teenagers answered that he contributed richly to the English language. His plays taught something, and with the depth of his work, modern people can still learn from him.
At 15 or 16 years old, students said during the workshop they didn’t actually find they related to Shakespeare. One said she has never considered killing herself or her boyfriend, for example.
But that didn’t stop them from having fun with it, laughing and engaging with the actors in the workshop and during the performance.
Jakob Hiett, a sophomore, said it was a lot of fun learning techniques to understand Shakespeare.
“It’s kind of tricky to figure out how it’s supposed to be read,” Hiett said. “I really enjoy how they can kind of relate, how they didn’t get it at first.
“He sounds like an interesting guy, good stories and the stuff behind it’s pretty cool.”
Hiett said he can’t relate to it yet, but he thought it was amazing how Shakespeare changed the language, with things we use every day.
Carr said he didn’t connect with the author right away, either.
“It took me awhile to get into it, and it wasn’t until I was in college and almost to graduate school that I could relate to the themes,” he said. “Looking past the complexity of the language, themes of jealousy, anger and being in love can find a connection.”
Albright said she started acting while young, and as a freshman, she made a connection with Shakespeare when she read “Romeo and Juliet.”
“I was struck. He is writing about me. I get this so deeply, what it is to be in love at 14.”
He did it in so few words, she said. The play and the love interest in the play moved her.
Since then, she has never been disappointed with Shakespeare, she said.
“It’s awesome because our kids, most of them have never seen a play before,” Handman said. A lot of students are interested in the arts, but not all of them are exposed to much.
“Sometimes, it ignites a passion they never knew they had,” she said.
As the actors work with students, they also work with teachers to more effectively teach Shakespeare, she said. Gone are the days of reading Shakespeare’s entire plays. Rather, the teaching staff is learning to break up the plays and incorporate group performances of passages.
The teacher’s workshops stress physical movement, Handman said. The body language helps illustrate the meaning of the dialogue.
A team from the Shakespeare Festival compiles scenes and stitches together a script for the programs, Albright said during a question and answer session following the public performance. She and Carr tweaked the script to fit their needs before they set out on their school tour, visiting mostly high schools and some middle schools throughout the year.
The team doesn’t work at elementary schools very often, but she has been to three, Albright said. “It’s great to see those kids engage in Shakespeare. You think, ‘they’re 6, 7 or 8;’ but they get it.”
Albright said the lines aren’t really that hard to remember. Shakespeare has a rhythm, and it “sticks with you.”
She has performed in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” three times, though she never played Helena before developing the school performance. She didn’t need to learn the part. She already knew it from hearing it so much.
Shakespeare is easier to remember than contemporary plays, Albright said.
Albright said her favorite role wasn’t Shakespearean. It was a character from the play “Up” in 2006 when she played opposite of her husband. That’s how they met.
She said she plans to leave acting after the next season to teach at the festival and Southern Oregon University in an attempt to marry her love for teaching and acting.
Carr’s career includes teaching at schools in New York, and he has appeared in European indie films. This is his first year with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has appeared on the “Chappelle’s Show” and had a small part in “The Wire.”
How well he enjoys his roles often depends on whom he is working with, he said.
“I typically enjoy what I’m doing at the moment,” he said.