What’s Greek about Shakespeare? with Amy Cohen

The Greeks did their theater with the lights on too. But their stages and their audiences were much larger. To illustrate this, our lecturer from this Tuesday, Amy Cohen (Professor of Classics at Randolph College, and daughter of the ASC’s co-founder and Director of Mission, Ralph Cohen) brought every camper into a circle on the King Theater stage, to feel how close everyone is together, then took everyone outside and had us form a circle in the grass outside, a circle at least four times as large. “This is the scale. Size matters in theater.”

One of the ways size matters so much in Amy Cohen’s productions is in the use of masks for their productions. She and her students have been using full helmet masks in their productions of Greek plays at the college amphitheater, which suit the larger space far better than a tighter indoor venue. To give the campers an experience with these masks, she gave them a little bit of choreography for “row, row, row your boat” and had a group of volunteers all sing and dance together.

The masks are a bit creepy when you first see them, but they improve with exposure, and they seem less weird when the wearers are portraying some sort of strong emotion or action. Cohen has mentioned that it usually takes an audience about five minutes to accept the masks in performance, but that that time is doubled when they have in-climate weather and have to perform indoors. The masks need more space to function. Once an audience has accepted the masks, the masks morph into the character portrayed -- so much so that she often gets questions about how they make the masks move, or how many masks they have for different emotions, when they don’t move at all, and the only emotions read onto them are the ones given by the actor through their bodies.

She had some of the campers do a couple of scenes with the masks on, to show a little of how the masks work in performance. Here is Rachel playing Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

After her demonstration with the masks, Cohen fielded all sorts of questions about Greek theater, about the plays in this camp and their classical roots, and about Greek history. She dispelled some common misconceptions about “Classical Theater” such as a “tragic flaw” or the “Aristotelian unities” which get passed off as rules, when examination of the plays we know from the time show these “rules” are merely observations of what happens some of the time. She talked about Greek heroism, and how it is much more self-serving than Roman ideals. Greek heroes seemed to long for their names to be remembered far more than they were concerned about loyalty to a person or state. She also pointed out that the subjects of the Greek plays, particularly the tragedies, are big and noble and not at all colloquial. Today many translations attempt to make them feel like they are the sort of drama which might happen in the living room, but they are comprised of stories with massive scope and consequence. She also mentioned that love stories were not popular topics for drama (until later in Greek history, maybe 4th century BC) the way they are now. Shakespeare and Marlow take some of the scope and grandeur of these stories and add love stories to them, add normal everyday people who bring these stories home, into our lives and minds.

What else is happening at YCTC?

Wednesday evening, the “What You Will” talent show went up, and since I know it beggars all description, I will simply pass along some photographs of the evening as soon as I can.

Thursday, instead of having a lecture, the whole camp went to see part of another show at the Blackfriars Playhouse: the Touring Troupe’s production of The Winter’s Tale, which was having a dress rehearsal during normal lecture time. However, the campers were only able to see the first half of the production, so there was a great variety of response to the pre-intermission part of the story. Some mentioning, “Leontes is pretty opinionated. I don’t think I like him at all.” or "Yay, for the depressing half!" Some of the campers have been in productions of this play; one had acted in The Winter’s Tale at ASCTC earlier this summer. Others were in the camp production two years back, and some had never seen or the play and had no idea of the story. It’s one of my favorites in Shakespeare, so here’s hoping they come back sometime to see the end. :)

As always, the weekends at camp are full of trips to the Playhouse to see the ASC’s shows, but this weekend featured two other special events. Saturday night was the Masquerade ball, a dress up affair featuring everything from Elizabethan Ball gowns to fairy wings. On Sunday the whole camp drove out to Lake Lofton to spend the day outside, where everyone had some time in the sun, on the beach, in the water, and just time to relax in the midst of all the craziness of camp.

Today we begin the home stretch, heading towards the final productions on Sunday afternoon. Everyone’s way more comfortable. We might make ice-cream runs during siesta, or sit around chatting about where best to find stain remover in walking distance of Stuart Hall. We start the late-night rehearsals in the Playhouse, where the campers get a chance to rehearse their plays in their performance space. This morning was the last workshop. There are only two more lectures, and the rest of the camp will be devoted to preparing for the final shows and preshow performances. You can feel the energy among the campers despite how much of their days are just plain hard work. Watching them succeed when we set the bar so high is a pleasure every day.

Knife Fights

As we begin week three, we've been phasing out of our workshops and phasing in to our Pre-Show rehearsals. One of the recent workshop days, known affectionately as “Combat Day,” involved all of the campers. Some were in an unarmed combat workshop with Jeremy West and some were in an armed workshop with ASC actor, Ben Curns.

Rather than finding some way of giving Broadsword lessons with improvised cardboard tubes, the weapon these campers learned to work with was a makeshift knife -- or paint-stirrers, to be more precise. Before he even handed out the paint stirrers, Ben proclaimed this maxim: “Every cool fight is safe. Not every safe fight is cool.” And before the campers held those stirrers, Ben and Emily (one of the counselors trained in stage combat) gave them all a lot to think about in terms of how to stand, how to hold oneself, and how to react to a partner in a way which is both cool and which promotes the safety of yourself, your partner and everyone else around you.

The campers started exploring the different knife grips, a variety of “I am ready to fight” stances, and then paired up ready to tell some stories. Whether you’re fighting or dancing or just talking to each other, you are telling stories about the relationship you and your partner have. How you move together tells what that that person means to you, how angry or scared or hurt or young or old that other person makes you feel. When Ben started teaching them a choreographed fight, which he demonstrated with Emily, every pair of campers copied each move in the fight as they learned it bit by bit, but every fight was different. Some of the stories told by the fights were stories about one of the two combatants being frightened and not wanting to fight. Some of the fights told stories that looked deathly serious. Some of the fights looked more like dances, because of the years of ballet training the two combatants brought to the space. Half the class would work at a time, which gave everyone a chance not only to work, but also to watch the others working, and sometimes presented the opportunity to give comments as well. For instance, “She points her toe when she thrusts with her knife. Did you notice? She’s like the ballerina of death!”



Throughout the workshop Ben reminded the campers again and again, “I would rather see a slow fight which is totally clean than a faster fight which is even remotely sloppy.” So the campers stayed slow, stayed cool, stayed in communication with each other, and stayed safe. By the end of the workshop, there were a lot of really impressive looking fights, all worked through with patience and careful attention to detail. In Emily’s words, “Perfection is all I ask.”

Playing Pretend and the Spanish Armada

Earlier this week Christine Schmidle, graduate of the MBC MLitt/MFA program and director of Session 2's A Midsummer Night's Dream, led a workshop of the ideas and techniques of Michael Chekov. His views on acting include the idea that feelings cannot be commanded, but qualities can. Although it may not be possible to make yourself feel tender, you can behave in a manner indicating tenderness, and you will, therefore, appear tender. First handing out selections from “On the Technique of Acting,” Christine had the campers study the descriptions of different terms and techniques -- such as Focal point, Radiating and Receiving, Improvisation, Entirety, Form, Psychological Gesture, Characterization, and Imagination -- and then explain these terms to the group. These exercises are like lightbulbs. You don’t need them all, but they’re there for you to use to illuminate your acting.

The campers then put these ideas into action as Christine had them do an improvisation exercise where they were exploring an imagined atmosphere. What if all around you instead of air was Jello? “Try moving in it. Does it get in your mouth? Do you like that? Now you are in the atmosphere of fire.” Followed by water, mud, happiness, stone, tension, awe and clouds. It was fascinating to see which atmospheres resembled each other, and how each affected the way the campers moved in their space.

Next was a more elaborate imagination exercise in which Christine led them all through a complicated sequence of locations and attributes, including the beach, the woods, and climbing Mt. Olympus, then becoming a fairy or a classical deity or a soldier all in turn. The campers put themselves into the world Christine described with incredible specificity which was a delight to watch. They fell to the ground when they lost their fairy wings, shivered and laughed with delight when they had run right up to the shoreline and had the waves of the sea crash around their feet, and sat in perfect stillness as Diana or Jupiter, contemplating their own imagined immortality.

By this time everyone was ready for a break, but you know you’re at Shakespeare camp when at a break in the workshop everyone begins working on their lines.

After the break, they started applying these techniques to the characters they play in the productions for this camp, considering questions like: How does your character move her hands? Which leg would he move first? Haircolor? Earrings? Maybe just one? The camper imagined all the particulars of their characters, then stepped into them, and began walking and talking in that persona. For a final exercise, the campers each took about ten lines of the text they are working on in their plays and put concrete actions to motion of the speech. Maybe your character cradles his first line and punches the second. Drawing in a character with the third line? It was two and a quarter hours constructive work, while it all came across with the discovery and delight of playing pretend like a four year old.

On Tuesday, Dr. Mary Hill Cole, a professor at Mary Baldwin College, gave a lecture on the stories of history and what we store in our memories. Beginning with some questions for the campers she circled around what we know or remember about the history of the last 100 years. Next she let us extrapolate what we imagine Shakespeare and Marlowe might have known about the last 100 years in the history of England and its connections with the rest of Europe. Who are the big names? What are the big events?

The rest of the lecture went through some of the events and persons most important in the history of England and the world from 1484 (100 years before the birth of Shakespeare and Marlowe) till well into their lifetimes. We talked about the Wars of the Roses, what was at stake, and how that affected the kings who followed. We talked about Henry VIII, his wives, and their fates. How did Elizabeth became queen, and who was in the way of her coming to the throne? What was the importance of the shift from Catholicism to the Protestant Church of England, and how were the regular English citizens affected by it? We talked about the Spanish Armada, and the Gunpowder Plot, as well as the various plans and purposes of her time as queen. We also talked a bit about James I, and how the country was different under his rule. Dr. Cole ended her lecture by answering any questions from the group. Who was the "dark lady" of the sonnets? Was Marlowe gay? What about Shakespeare writing sonnets to a man; do we know who this man was? Inquiring minds want to know.

First week in pictures!

Rather than telling about every detail of this camp, I thought I’d show a bit of the work and the fun that goes on at ASCTC.


Here are some of the campers waking up the space in the Blackfriars Playhouse, the first evening of camp.


Monday morning, Doreen (one of our camp co-directors) opens the auditions at Stuart Hall's King Theatre, encouraging the campers to make the space their own.


Campers work together in the auditions, planning their wordless storytelling.


One of the most popular workshops is Clown Class…


…taught by ASC actor, Daniel Kennedy.


Let the clowning begin!


Rehearsals are now in full swing. Lysander and Hermia get lost in the woods of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.


Riley Steiner directs her cast in Dido, Queen of Carthage.


“I, one snout by name, present a wall.” In the play within A Midsummer Night’s Dream.


When not working on a scene with the director, campers spend rehearsal working on their lines.


Or running bits of scenes.


Sometimes with a counselor coaching their work.


Every weekend, the campers go see two shows at Blackfriars, and often dress up for the occasion.


This weekend, Doreen led an acro-balance workshop with help from Tom.


It takes great teamwork.


And a lot of trust.

More traditional blog posts coming soon!

Text and Storytelling

The directors cast their shows on Monday afternoon, and that night, the directors led a script party in which they talked about some basics of language as the whole camp plunged into the text. Even basics like questions such as “What is verse?” and “What is prose?” turned into discussions of Christopher Marlowe’s “Mighty Line” and how his style of verse is different from Shakespeare’s “heart-robbing line.” The campers also got some basics of script preparation and how best to use the physical script. What should they write in it? What are some good ways of marking scripts? What should you do with notes from the director you get in rehearsal? One of the directors did a little activity about intention from Othello, the scene in which Iago tries to get the handkerchief from Emilia, and everyone learned about the excitement of investing each line with a clear direction and a motive.

Starting Tuesday, the camp began its regular routine. Workshops or lectures in the mornings, rehearsals in the afternoons, more workshops in the evenings. Our first lecture was with Bob Jones, ASC actor, Mary Baldwin MFA graduate, and this session’s director of Troilus and Cressida.

Bob talked about the rise of English theater, pointing out that when Shakespeare was born, theater as we think of it did not exist. There were mystery pageants, traveling acrobats, musicians, skits, jokes, dancing acts, but no theatrical industry. All that changed with the growth of London, and by the time Shakespeare was working, there was a thriving professional theatrical community. The campers all examined sketches and woodcuts of early modern playing spaces, and what these playhouses might have looked like, keeping in mind the knowledge they now all have of the Blackfriars Playhouse reconstruction we have here in Staunton.

At the end of this workshop, we looked at all of the original quarto title pages of the plays for this session and talked about the process of printing and bookshops and what sort of information worked as advertisement on the title pages. To solidify all of this information, the lecture ended with the campers breaking into groups to write and design their own title pages for the plays. The title pages sported printer’s marks, highlights from the plays, and elaborate names for the imaginary printing houses they came up with to publish their quarto texts.

Workshops so far have included clown, mask, unarmed stage combat, and music. Today there were not a few red clown noses seen among the campers. On Wednesday morning, half the camp went to a stage combat workshop with Jeremy West, fight captain for the ASC Summer and Fall seasons. Besides teaching the campers a wide variety of slaps, punches, hairpulls, drags, falls and rolls, Jeremy taught them all a great deal about learning and storytelling. A common misconception in learning a physical skill -- be it a sport, a musical instrument, or combat move -- is that speed equals quality. In any skill, the important thing is to learn specificity in technique and pattern, not to try and go at a fast pace too quickly, because fast and sloppy gets dangerous. When the campers learned to “fall” onstage, we rolled out safety mats for practicing. Really it is not “falling” so much as “controlled sitting.” If you can learn the proper technique on a mat and get all your mistakes fixed with protective cushioning, you can learn to perform the falls, rolls, and combat without a mat very safely. Jeremy challenged the campers to always think about what story they’re telling onstage. As an actor you might think falling to the ground all sleek and fast would be the most impressive thing, but perhaps a more interesting story would be a character loosing a battle to stay vertical. Which choice is best for the character? For the play?

This morning Ralph Alan Cohen, co-founder and Director of Mission for the ASC, lectured about the plays and about verse. Asking the campers for a line or two of the plays they are working on memorizing, he helped them to think about their stressed and unstressed beats, and he encouraged them all to use all the tools that Shakespeare and Marlowe give them to speak with clarity and grace. When he got onto talking about the plays, he used the same sort of material he uses in his graduate courses on Shakespeare’s plays. The campers left the lecture all buzzing with renewed enthusiasm for the plays.

Session Two Begins

Camp begins with passion and determination. From the first introductions in the late afternoon on Sunday, these campers show their eagerness to be a part of something larger than themselves. We all sat in a circle and introduced ourselves, said where we were from and why we came to this camp, or if we were returning, what brought us back. One camper said he kept coming back because each new session, each new lecture or workshop was “a quest in excellence.” Another said, “I am here because I absolutely love to learn, I absolutely love Shakespeare, and I absolutely love people pursuing their passion.”

Many campers are interested in not only performing language but in forming it, with an abundance of writers in the camp, one voicing herself, “I do poetry, or it does me.” One camper came because she is “attracted to the humanity of Shakespeare’s characters.” Many want to learn “the craft of performing,” and how best to express themselves.

Among the fleet, we have campers experienced in swing dance, tap dance, Irish dance, clogging, waltzing, modern, jazz and ballet, contra dance, square dance and belly dance, to say nothing of lacrosse, wrestling, fencing, soccer, ice-skating, gymnastics, rollerblading, hula hooping, and pogo-stick-jumping. One camper mentioned she didn’t do much, "only" juggling. When Emily, our fire-breathing-and-juggling counselor mentioned her latest item on her list of skills was blacksmithing, one of the campers called out, “Oh! Me too!” This group seems not only to profess an outstanding number of skills, but also an overwhelming aptitude and eagerness to learn. Even those regretting their lack of skills in a certain area don’t close off their options, saying not “I don’t play any instruments” but “I don’t play any instruments... yet.”

Doreen Bechtol, the camp co-director, mentioned that when we think about putting up plays in only three weeks, with so many other lectures and workshops and plans and ideas and activities, it seems impossible. But she went on to say that that shouldn’t worry us, because doing what’s impossible is what we are all about.

Sunday evening, the whole camp trouped over to the Blackfriars Playhouse to take a tour of the building and to get a feel for the space of the playhouse. When they began exploring the space, filling it with their presence, their voices, we learned that these campers bring much more than a long list of special skills. They bring an ability to listen, to give each other focus, and to share and take the stage in turn. Even the few lines they spoke were a teaser for yesterday morning's auditions where we saw even more of their generosity in performance.

The auditions in ASCTC always hold an active place in my heart, as in them I see so much potential. Auditions are a blend of workshop activities and the traditional recitation of 10 lines of text. Beginning with running up, taking the space in turn, and sharing their names once again, the campers then learned a short round sung to them by the counselors. Once they learned the music, they broke into groups of three (or in one case, five) and schemed up and rehearsed their own performance of that song. These performances are riveting: some musically striking, some with clever staging or strong character choices, some performed in dance.
After all these short performances, the counselors break the campers into three large groups and give them ten lines of text from one of the three plays they'll be performing: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Troilus and Cressida, or Christopher Marlowe’s Dido Queen of Carthage. The groups then tell the story of these plays entirely without words, guided by the ten lines of text to create stunning stage pictures and beautiful movement work. I won’t spill too many of the secrets, as many of the images and gestures will be used in the final performances as they develop. The motto of the day remains, “Less talk, more monkey!” as the campers figure out their performance pieces with fewer words and more physical trial and error by working together.

Listening in to the directors, I could hear them asking each other, “In love with anyone yet?” “Um, yes, all of them.” “Give me any twelve of them and I’ll be happy.” And although I am uncertain how they can choose among such strong young actors, the plays are full of so many wonderful characters that I know they cannot help but choose well.

Dramaturging for ASCTC

Here is a post from one of our beloved dramaturgs, Paul Rycik, sharing what it means to be a dramaturg and some of his experiences in the Timon rehearsals

In some ways, a dramaturg is like the twine of the theatre world- at first people don’t know what to do with it, but it always comes in handy. The job itself is often not very well defined, which means that a dramaturg’s responsibilities change on a daily basis. Therefore, when I came to work at ASCTC, I knew that the best policy was to expect the unexpected and sure enough, I found myself doing a huge variety of tasks before and after rehearsals began, from creating annotated notes in the script, to writing character descriptions, to creating a dramaturgy website (https://sites.google.com/site/timonofathensdramaturgy/home).

I view a dramaturg primarily as a resource for the actors. When rehearsals began, I made myself useful by giving workshops and lectures on the play and providing packets and other information to the actors. I also served as a text coach; each actor came to me and we would discuss the meaning in the text, and talk about how to apply those ideas in their performances The campers listened very carefully to everything I had to say and brought a great deal of creativity. One particular area I feel we had great collaboration on was implied, or embedded, stage directions, an instance in which subtle cues in the text direct an actor to gesture or laugh or move in some way.

Together, the director, the two counselors, the actors, and I have mined this play’s text and discovered a treasure trove of rich humor, social commentary, and incredibly complex characters. We spent a great deal of time figuring out what each character is saying and why he or she talks the way they do. Some characters in this play speak in a very long-winded manner, using hyperbolical text, noting these tendencies gives the actor clues about their character’s personality. Other characters like Timon and Apemantus frequently speak antithetically, juxtaposing words like “dark” and “light,” possibly because the characters wish to see chaos in Athens. All of the actors are working to find the richness in the text and use it to create and costume their characters in very imaginative ways.

One of my favorite moments of the rehearsal process was the day the actors created a framing device for the play. The director wanted to create the market place of Athens for the first scene and gave the actors free reign to interpret how to represent it onstage. The actors found a perfect iconic device to represent many of the play’s themes of poverty and wealth: cardboard boxes. They strew the stage with boxes to represent shops, stands, goods, even the shields of the peacekeeping soldiers. Characters ran in and out, pressing their wares, and it became apparent that the Athens of this play is a place where most residents are profoundly poor. Likewise, the boxes became Timon’s banqueting table and the cave he retreats to in the second half of the play, which showed the cast members’ great imagination and ingenuity. It was at this moment that I knew I was involved with a great production and that this group of actors was well suited to taking on this challenging and difficult play.

Dramaturgs don’t usually get thanks for their work, since everything they do is invisible to critics and audience members, but I feel my reward is seeing these talented young performers take some of my ideas and use them to make their own performances richer to create a wonderful piece of theatre. The talent and enthusiasm of these wonderful performers and the chance to work alongside Jeremy, Caroline, and Francis on this production of Timon is certainly a reward in itself. I truly hope that when you see this production, you see its value is worth its weight in gold.

Saudate, Ephemerality, and What You Will

What You Will is the talent night at ASCTC held last Wednesday, where the actors perform whatever they would like to perform. Barbara and Scottie (two returning campers) hosted the event with energy and charm, announcing every song or dance, every scene or jokes and combination of silliness. There were murders and songs about friendship. Scenes from Shakespeare, songs from Disney princesses, unrequited love, human furniture, and three beautiful pieces of original work. Katie (one of the first year campers), wrote a play exploring Shakespeare and nursery rhymes and growing to adulthood, Jocelyn (at our camp for the first time, and off to college in the fall) shared her haunting poem on the inefficacy of communication and Zach, one of our counselors, shared a piece he’d written for guitar.

He introduced this song as one he wrote for a girl he met at this camp many years ago, and said he called it Saudate, a Portuguese word without a satisfactory English translation. I’d heard of this word once before, when I was asked if I had been homesick at all in London. I had answered something along the lines of “sort of.” I was never really homesick for my hometown, but I was sometimes pre-emptively homesick for London. Aching with the knowledge that I’d have to leave before long. The woman I was talking to mentioned “saudate” as a word meaning the very thing I had been fumbling to express. This word, saudate seems to encapsulate so much of the homesick, the heartache, the loneliness, nostalgia, and the longing for something or someone which is so prevalent in theater, in a summer camp, and in our lives.

We saw the same sort of nostalgia in some of the other scenes last night. There were reprises of scenes from last year’s What You Will performances, and even throw-backs to last year’s performances. Jack Read and Caitlin Barns (counselors) with Tom Dumontier (Campus Life Coordinator & Co-Camp Director) did one of the scenes from Love’s Labour’s Lost, to everyone’s delight but to no one more than Elijah and Barbara, who played in the scene in final perfromance last year. Doreen Bechtol and Rebecca Speas both reprised roles they had played in different productions of Twelfth Night, Speas as Viola and Doreen as Olivia. Because performance is so painfully ephemeral, these reprises, these echoes of past performances strike a powerful chord in the emotions of everyone who’s shared in that experience.

Really, there’s something very sad about performance. Unlike statues, paintings or even playscripts which can outlive their creators, plays resist any attempts permanence. Videotapes, snapshots, descriptive essays, or notebooks full of journalings are nothing compared to the communion of live actors and live audience living in a moment room together. Summer camps are like this too. Part of what makes the experience of a camp so poignant is the fact that is short. Best three weeks of the year, perhaps, but it’s only three weeks, and sometimes while you’re in it, you realize how precious those moments are.

So, while Zach played his piece, those evocative chords encompassing our thoughts and emotions in music more eloquently than I can in language, this is what paced through my mind. But what happened at the end of that melancholy piece was nearly as remarkable as the artistry of the piece itself. All of us in the audience jumped to our feet and cheered. Our response to this strange thing we call performance is to applaud.

Cohen's lectures and some teasers for the shows

This past week Dr. Ralph Alan Cohen, the co-founder and director of mission at the American Shakespeare Center, gave both lectures to the campers. He spoke about the founding of the American Shakespeare Center, and its mission to the world, but also spoke about the plays the campers are producing. In an exercise, he asked each cast to come up with three shots which included every cast member, and which together told the story of the play. He also asked them to come up with three tag words to sell their particular play, if they were working in marketing. What is this play about? What’s exciting? Why should you come? He is one shot from each cast.

The Winter’s Tale - Scandal. Love. Forgiveness.



In this action packed shot, you can see nearly every plot point of the first half of The Winter’s Tale. Polixenes and Camillo flee to Bohemia, Paulina and Emilia mourn the dead Mamillius and Hermione, Antigonus runs with baby Perdita, 1st Lord, Cleomines and Dion express their grief and outrage at the torn Leontes who both commands the flight and morns his wife’s death, while a lord reads the oracle.

In The Two Noble Kinsmen, a more specific moment in the plot is staged, that of the battle between Palamon and Arcite over Emilia who cannot choose between them. Hippolyta looks on warily, Theseus is tense, The Jailer’s Daughter will not let Palamon go, and the onlookers cheer on the fight. All part of the aura of

The Two Noble Kinsmen - Friendship. Betrayal. Happiness.



Our last play here is perhaps harder to market because of its heavy and pessimistic themes, but riveting when performed by these enthusiastic souls.

Timon of Athens - Wealth. Debt. Consequences.

Here is a play in which the identification of most characters comes from their occupation rather than their names, and Timon, in the middle of them all, finds his excessive generosity has come back to bite him. He has no friends only creditors, demanding he pay his debts.



Hope these images whet your appetite for the upcoming shows.

Weekend and Monday workshop

On Friday evening, the campers went to their first show at the Blackfriars Playhouse, the opening night of The Tempest. Everyone was dressed for the occasion, and it was great fun to see the campers all cleaned up. After a week of yoga pants, running shorts and T-shirts, here they were, sporting ties and hats, heels, summer dresses, scarves, and suspenders. Their enthusiasm infected the whole playhouse. Sometimes this energy showed itself in silent rapt attention, sometimes in applause after a particularly impressive scene, and at intermission their energy broke into dancing to the actors’ music as they waited in line for the snack cart. I had hoped to go with the campers to The Importance of Being Earnest the following evening, but the house, including standing room, was completely sold out, so I had to take it on good report that everyone had a good time.

The weekends at ASCTC feature a lot of much-appreciated time out of doors. During the weekdays, the campers are free to spend time outside during their siesta after lunch, either on the Stuart Hall grounds or walking in pairs around downtown Staunton. Sometimes in rehearsal a few campers will head outside with an assistant director, working on another scene or running lines while the director works on a different scene, but otherwise most of the workshops, lectures, and rehearsals are held indoors. On Saturday, however, all the campers went to Gypsy Hill Park for a picnic lunch, and on Sunday, everyone headed to Lake Lofton for a day of cookouts and sunshine and swimming -- exactly what they needed after a week full of working their minds.

Monday morning opened with other pair of workshops, one in Voice with Allison Glenzer and another in Alexander Technique with Jeremiah Davis and his teacher, Daria Okugawa. She describes Alexander Technique as an endless study, like learning to play a musical instrument, but says that even a few pointers in a 2-hour workshop will give you enough to start thinking and working. Much of the morning was spend simply identifying areas of stress and tension in our bodies and in our lives and realizing that awareness of these areas will allow us to change our habits, so we can expend less energy on simple actions like walking or sitting or standing and be more focused on whatever task we are hoping to perform.

This was my first experience with any sort of Alexander workshop, and though I usually sit and take notes on the workshops, Jeremiah encouraged me to join in, saying that I’d learn a great deal more by doing it, rather than by just looking at the campers work. The most amazing thing for me was watching the way that the campers' bodies changed just by having Okugawa shift their head or shoulders so that their spine was erect and not curved or slumped to one side. Suddenly the teenagers I had become used to seeing as slumped, tired, or lacking physical confident turned into beings of statuesque beauty and elegance. Every inch of their bodies became suddenly engaged and alive in a matter of seconds. The rest of the campers were gasping at the change, which wasn’t necessarily one they could hold onto, as all of them had build some pretty strong habits. At least now they knew what they were capable of, had had a glimpse of it, and they can take that shimmer into the way they carry themselves in the world.

Interview with Hugh, Emma, and Finn

Finn had mentioned in a lecture that morning that he had never been to a Shakespeare play before this past weekend, so I asked him at lunch if he would be up for an interview, and as it turned out, I got Emma and Hugh as well. Hugh is a veteran of this camp, but Emma had also never seen a Shakespeare play, and they were both eager to talk.

Me: So Hugh, you’ve been to lots of shows at Blackfriars, right?

Hugh: I’ve been going to the Blackfriars for I don’t know, maybe two or three? Three years.

Me: And what have you seen? What is the best show you’ve seen?

Hugh: [...] My top three would definitely be Tempest, because the crossdressing scene and the Shakespeare rap just blew my mind. But then the other two before that would have to be Titus Andronicus. Just because it was so well done.

Me: What made it well done? What did you like about Titus?

Hugh: Sarah Fallon. And the tasteful use of blood. Not over-blooded, not under-blooded, but just the right amount of blood. And I don’t know, good acting. And there was another one. [...] Taming of the Shrew. Favorite play ever. Loved Petruchio. Ben Curns. Love Ben Curns. So awesome.

Me: [...] So what about you guys? Never been to a Shakespeare play?

Emma: I’d never been to a Shakespeare play before.

Me: […] So what brought you to this camp?

Emma: Well, for the experience! 'Cause it’s completely different from what I’ve been trained to do.

Hugh: What have you been trained to do?

Emma: Always face the audience, never turn your back on the audience, and now, you’ve got audience all the way around you. It’s really, really different from what I’ve learned. Being able to see it all and with the lights on. I’d never even heard of that. [...] The Tempest was the first Shakespeare Play I’d ever seen, and it just absolutely blew my mind, so fantastic. My favorite line of Shakespeare is, “We are such things as dreams are made on,” and it had totally slipped my mind that that was the play it was from, so when he said that line, I totally had a spaz attack in the middle of the audience. It was hilarious.

Hugh: Me and Cam, we were just dying. […] I had heard the “We are such stuff as dreams are made on” speech like so much. I never had to say it, but I have it pretty well memorized because they say it at the end of every day at the [Virginia] Renaissance Faire, which is an awesome closing speech. And I was like “that’s The Tempest!” And I was just making Cam die, because I was just leaning over and whispering the lines. Prospero would say a line and I’d be like “next line.” I’d whisper the line, and then he’d say it, and then I would say a line, and then he would say it, and she was, like, so confused by me, like, “Why do you know what he’s saying!?”

Me: Finn, you’d never seen a Shakespeare play either,

Finn: And it was so drastically different from my views of Shakespeare.

Hugh: Well, this is not normal Shakespeare.

Emma: Yeah, that’s true.

Me: What were you expecting?

Finn: For one thing, I didn’t expect to understand it or follow the plot at all. I thought, “It’s going to be words I don’t know, spoken way too fast.” Because I’ve read Shakespeare, but I’ve always had to read it, to read each line, six or seven times. And I thought I’m not going to be able to do that, and it’s just going to be really fast talking, and not even, or hardly even English, and I’m not going to know it. And then I went there, and for a moment I was totally terrified, and then not only was it understandable, like really comprehensible, it was also surprisingly relatable, it didn’t seem that ancient at all.

Hugh: That’s why we still do Shakespeare.

Finn: It seemed really connected to modern life in a way I didn’t think was actually possible.

Emma: What I absolutely loved about this was that when we went to see the plays, we knew the actors. It makes it so much better, just really, really cool.

Hugh: Ariel, the music guy [Greg Phelps].

Finn: We wrote a song with Ariel!

Emma: And Miriam [Donald] played Miranda.

Me: And you had voice with Alli [Allison Glenzer]?

Emma: Just yesterday.

Hugh: I haven’t yet, I’m looking forward to it.

Emma: Yeah, it’s pretty awesome, she taught me how to vacuum my lungs. Oh. Mygod. It was just amazing.

Me: How do you vacuum your lungs?

Emma: You breathe all of your breath out, and when you think there’s no breath left in you, you keep breathing out. And then you put your hand over your mouth and then your nose, and then you hold it for a very, very long time until you can’t hold it anymore and then you breathe in and you can feel it, and it’s just awesome.

Me: So, it’s to help you breathe deeper?

Emma: It’s to open your lungs, kind of vacuum out everything.

Me: cool.

Emma: I never heard of doing anything like that, and the second she said we’re going to vacuum out your lungs, I was like, "ohmygod I’m so excited!"

[everyone laughs]

Finn: That would not have been my original response.

Hugh: I would not have been excited.

Emma: I just love making a better environment for singing.

[lunch was pretty much finished by this time, and all the campers were dispersing, so Finn summed it up for us]

Finn: So the moral of my story is I was pleasantly surprised.

End of Week One

We’ve finished the first week of camp, a week full to the brim with workshops. Already the campers have had classes in music, stage combat, text analysis, mask and movement, clown, and dance with actors from the ASC and from other theater professionals. To highlight just a couple of these, I’ll share a bit about Greg Phelps’s music class and Jeremy West’s stage combat.

Greg began his class by walking through some elements of music: rhythm and melody, harmony and dynamics, all the components which make it dramatic as its own art and add to the drama of a play. Next the campers analysed some songs in Shakespeare’s canon, suggesting adjectives to describe the different pieces. “Come away, come away death” is pretty hardcore sad, all about unrequited love and wanting to die because of it, whereas “Oh Mistress Mine, Where are you Roaming?", a song concerned with the shortness of life and the sweetness of love, has a gentler melancholy. Before long the campers used these ideas to work together and write their own song of “Under the Greenwood Tree.” Guitars, ukuleles, violin, melodica, Irish drum and beatboxing combined to make a many-layered song, one they could all be proud of. Throughout the process, Greg emphasized the power of “yes.” When people work together creatively, disagreement stops progress, so whenever there were two different ideas on the table, almost every time we found a way to incorporate both ideas into the song, using every person’s creativity to the utmost.

Stage Combat is probably one of the subjects that campers get most excited about learning, and that parents are least excited about their children trying out. In Jeremy West’s class, there was no end of precaution in the process, because safety is so crucial to the performance of any sort of effective combat. The campers learned several different punches and slaps, where each camper’s hands do not even touch their scene partner, but the two work together to “sell” the action and to make it look convincing to the audience. After slaps and punches, they went on to hairpulls and drags, again actions that look terrifying, but are incredible to watch when you know that the actor who looks as though he is the victim is actually the one in control of what’s happening in each scene. Because of an odd number of participants, Rebecca Speas (one of the counselors) was working with one of the campers, and in the scene they were creating, Speas was ripping one camper around by his hair yelling, “Learn your lines! Learn your lines!” to which he frantically yelled in reply, “I will, I promise!” Two minutes later, they laughed and switched roles, this time with the camper yelling, “I’ve learned them. There are no more!”

Other parts of the class included lots of practice in how to fall safely, and how to do a sitting, a standing, and a jumping role, giving all of the campers all the tools they need to act responsibly and safely onstage.

Besides the workshops, and, of course, rehearsals, Dr. Paul Menzer, the director of the MLitt/MFA program in Shakespeare and Performance, came to lecture about Shakespeare and text. He brought in an Arden Complete works of Shakespeare in a large heavy volume, a laptop, a smartphone, and a flashdrive, and made the point that they are all the Complete works of Shakespeare. Each one is a piece of technology used for conveying information, just vessels for their contents. But here is the paradox: despite containing all the same words, the vessel does make a difference. Whatever we might say, the medium changes the message.

Armed with this mindset, Menzer lead us to explore how books and papers and inks and handwriting and printing and the whole culture of text were different then than they are today. How do theses differences change the way we understand Shakespeare, and what might that mean for future generations, when books are no longer the primary means of accessing literature?

Menzer also touched on how much individual characters in the plays say about themselves and the characters around them by their words, by the way they are addressed, or by how they address others. Ophelia is constantly in a lower status than the characters around her. She has no nurse or handmaid, the people she talks with while sane are the Prince, her father, and her older brother, all of whom are telling her what to do. Also interesting is that when she goes mad and drowns, Ophelia is the only character in all of Shakespeare’s canon who reportedly drowns and does not miraculously return. Menzer asserts that it is possible that Viola, a character who beginsTwelfth Night nearly drowned, and who has a similar situation to Ophelia, could be Shakespeare’s second go, second take, second life for Ophelia. It was a fascinating lecture, and got the kids all thinking.

Other stuff happening at camp so far?
*Many trips to Split Banana for gelato.
*Campers memorizing their lines in their rooms, in the shade outside, in the laundry room, in the library and in any number of crazy accents.
*Conversations about everything they’re learning.
*Self motivated rehearsals for the upcoming talent show, “What You Will.”
*Music is everywhere. Campers picking things out on a piano or a new uke or just singing while they walk. And the counselors sing lullabies to the campers to put them to sleep.

More about the weekend activities coming soon!

First Couple Days of Camp

Dear parents, friends, interested readers, all,

I am writing from the library at Stuart Hall, and while everyone else is hard at work in rehearsal, I thought I would post a first update on the camp and what the last day and a half has held.

For me, the auditions at ASCTC are as exciting as the final performances. Monday morning, these campers come full of potential and energy and dive right into the excitement and the joy of working. Doreen begins with exercises to help get some jitters out, and to remind the campers of the importance of timing and focus, of beginnings and endings, and the place of stillness onstage. All of which skills they put straight to use after learning to sing a round composed by some of the counselors and then divide into groups of three and make their own performances out of that song. Highlights of this section included a camper making up a guitar part to accompany his group, some use of mime, storytelling, unison movement and beatboxing, all of which gives the directors not only a good sense of the special skills of the campers but also shows teamwork, energy, stage presence and creativity.

The next section of the auditions is another sort of devised performance but in much larger groups. In three groups the campers tell the stories of the plays of this session without words, but aided by ten carefully chosen lines from the plays, and a list of required actions. These performances can be so beautiful they take away one’s breath, as Shakespeare’s images become physicalized, and these young people present stars burning in their spheres, the pain of isolation, the delight of young love and the sorrow of endings. Perhaps most impressive was the ten seconds of stillness as all the villagers gathered around the maddened Jailer’s Daughter, who was staring into the distance, “dreaming of another, better world.”

By the time the audition gets to the much anticipated 10 lines of prepared text, the campers were so enthusiastic and so eager to applaud each other’s success that we had to stop them to avoid spilling over into lunch.

The other particularly exciting part of Monday is the tour of Blackfriars Playhouse. After a brief of dense introduction to the whole of the building, including costume shop, trap door, backstage, balcony and then onto the main deal, which is again lead by Doreen, who gets all the kids onstage, all waking up the space and fills them full of questions.

How can you frame yourself in the architecture of this particular stage?
How can you give or command power onstage?
Everything is full of straight lines and angles except for the discovery space, the little curtained entrance right in the middle. How can you use that fluidity?
How can you hide onstage? What makes you take up more than usual?
What about your own voice in the space?
How much sound can you make?
How soft can you be and still be totally clear? It isn’t any easier than being loud, and takes all sorts of energy and focus.

The campers all got a chance onstage to feel themselves in that space, but also were right there in the theater watching their fellow campers, and learning just as much from watching others work, as working themselves. We looked at geometric figures and how, like painters, we can use shapes and lines to create focus and beauty onstage. As Doreen says, “make it art. Don’t make a ‘sort of’ line, make a line!”

Right before dinner the cast lists were posted and that evening the directors ran a “Paraphrase Extravaganza” teaching scansion and meter, rhetoric and how to paraphrase so the campers can begin really digging their teeth into the text.

This morning, Jeremy Febig lectured “On Shakespeares and Centers” which introduced Shakespeare and a smattering of history surrounding the man, as well as the ASC and some of the founding goals of the company. Covering conceptions of Shakespeare as unfamiliar, commonplace, mandatory, unimaginative, fixed up or intimidating, Febig explored some causes of these understandings of Shakespeare and what places like the ASC change these understandings. When produced with skill and imagination, using the staging conditions for which the plays were written, Shakespeare is seen for what he really is, relevant to his own day and ours, in conversation with our world, and with the world in which he wrote the plays. The campers engaged the material and asked lots of questions, shared many ideas of how Shakespeare is and could be taught. One camper said she hadn’t had a bad time learning Shakespeare in her English classes at School, but that it was difficult because they never read anything out loud. In her words, “it’s easier to act Shakespeare than to read it.”

Intro Post

American Shakespeare Center Theatre Camp 2011

The American Shakespeare Center Theatre Camp offers two summer Shakespeare intensives for ages 13-18 (residential or day camp). In each three-week session campers perform in an hour-long version of a Shakespeare play; participate in performance master classes (stage combat, dance, music, acrobatics); attend academic classes (theatre history, scansion/rhetoric, source study); and visit the Blackfriars Playhouse to watch the professional Resident and Touring Troupe actors rehearse and perform in our summer season of plays.

Campers at ASC Theatre Camp are taught by ASC scholars, graduate students from Mary Baldwin College’s MLitt/MFA in Shakespeare in Performance Program, and professional artists and educators from the acting troupes. Our vibrant community of Shakespeare enthusiasts welcomes campers to a wonderful world of intense play – we hope you can join us.

The shows in the camp's line-up have a Greek theme this year, in that we chose plays that Shakespeare (and Marlowe) set in Greece. In addition to studying Shakespeare and the early modern period, this summer's line-up will allow us to steep ourselves in Grecian manners, masks, and mythology. We’re also excited by the challenge of working on four plays that are new to our repertory: Two Noble Kinsmen, Timon of Athens, Troilus and Cressida, and Dido, Queen of Carthage, will see their premiere performances on the Blackfriars Stage this summer.

Session 1: June 19 – July 10, 2011

• The Winter’s Tale follows the tale of King Leontes, whose irrational jealousy leads him to accuse his wife of infidelity with his best friend. After the apparent deaths of his wife and son, Leontes abandons his infant daughter, Perdita, who is taken in and raised by shepherds. Sixteen years later, a series of surprises and reunions force Leontes to re-examine his choices.


• Two Noble Kinsmen is a collaboration between Shakespeare and his successor with the King’s Men, John Fletcher, and is also an adaptation of a tale out of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Best friends Palamon and Arcite are imprisoned in Athens, and both fall in love with the same woman, the Princess Emilia, who they see from their prison window. Their friendship turns to bitter enmity, and they decide they must break out of prison and settle the rivalry with a public tournament.


• Timon of Athens begins the play as a wealthy and generous gentleman, but when his supposed friends take advantage of his benevolence, eventually driving him to bankruptcy, his attitude changes. Cynical and betrayed, Timon retreats to a cave in the woods and tries to shut out the world which continues to make demands on him.

Session 2: July 17 – August 7, 2011

• Troilus and Cressida takes place towards the end of the Trojan War. The eponymous lovers are separated when the Trojans offer up Cressida as a prisoner of war to the Greeks, placing considerable strain on her relationship with Troilus. Meanwhile, Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks, must try to convince his best warrior, the proud Achilles, to rejoin the fight.


• Dido, Queen of Carthage meets and falls in love with the refugee Trojan prince Aeneas in this play by Shakespeare’s contemporary, Christopher Marlowe. Though her love is fanatical and consuming, Aeneas eventually betrays her, driving her to desperate action.


• A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the ultimate frothy romance, Shakespeare’s classic tale of lovers, fairies, and amateur actors taking to the forest to sort out their tangled lives. The mischievous spirit Puck intervenes with a powerful love potion, while Oberon, the King of the Fairies, plays a trick on his Queen that leads her to a most unorthodox love affair.