Specificity and Cookie Voices: Vocal Work with Allison Glenzer

Alli’s Voice Workshop

On Monday, half of the campers attended a voice workshop taught by an American Shakespeare Center actor Allison Glenzer. Although some campers met Alli for the first time at the workshop, they have all seen her perform this season in The Merchant of Venice and The Lion in Winter. Her bio can be found here, on the ASC website. The other half of the camp will attend the same workshop next week.

In a mere two hours, Alli expanded the generic definition of voice enormously by showing what elements of the body and mind we use to produce a voice, and by helping the campers to explore the full scope and range of their voices. Alli began the workshop by having the campers check in with descriptive similes of their current mental and physical conditions. They were invited to compare themselves to the weather, breakfast foods, or cars. One camper said she felt “like a glass of still water” and another like “a lightly toasted piece of bread with butter and honey”. The purpose of this exercise was to encourage the campers to avoid using vague and meaningless words like “good” and “fine,” because the last thing an actor wants to convey is vagueness.

The campers moved on to a full exploration of their bodies in relation to their voices. Alli used the Linklater Progression, affectionately known as “Zoo Woah Shah” to help the campers link body parts to potential vocal tones. Starting low in the knees and then moving upwards through hips, chest, chin, nose, eyes, and forehead, Alli guided the campers in producing distinctive vocal colors. Having an extensive range of different voices gives an actor many avenues to express his or her gender, temperament, and context more clearly and specifically.

Alli not only provided the campers with the tools to improve their vocal acting, she also boosted their confidence in their abilities to use these tools. When asked, “Have you ever had trouble hearing a baby cry?” the campers laughed and shook their heads. “We are built to be heard,” Alli replied, proving that although society teaches us to quiet down and be polite, a large voice is something we inherently possess and thus something we can rediscover. The campers were compelled to find their “I WANT A COOKIE” voice, or the voice a toddler would use to demand something. After working with the campers on volume, Alli moved on to diction and precision, reviewing the differences between voiced and unvoiced consonants, like p vs. b, f vs. v, and s vs. z. She then challenged their dexterity with a handful of tongue-twisters. The room was soon filled with the quick-paced chanting of “I slit a sheet, I sheet I slit, upon a slitted sheet I sit”!

To culminate the workshop, the campers got a chance to apply what they had learned from Alli to the plays they’re currently working on. Each selected one memorized line of his/her character’s text, and then performed it as audibly and precisely as possible, making sure to aspirate the consonants. The campers proved they had learned well, shown by Alli’s jumps of excitement at one camper’s skillful execution of a tough line riddled with ‘f’s!

As a closing exercise, Alli asked the campers to reinforce something that they wanted to remember from the day’s session. One camper reinforced that thinking specifically will help you speak specifically. Another reinforced the value of doing vocal warm-ups every day. And the general consensus was that Alli’s thorough and enthusiastic instruction left us all wiser, louder, and really wanting cookies!

--Emma L.

History of the Book

            Much of what we do here at the ASC Theatre Camp has the campers up on their feet working with the text, but a certain portion of our efforts go to ensuring that the campers learn about the significance and history of the texts that they are working with. During the course of our three-week camp, we bring in lecturers that teach the campers about their different specialty areas. Sarah Enloe, our Director of Education at the ASC, introduced guest lecturer William Proctor Williams as being something of a “Scholar Adventurer."  Part of his career has involved “finding buried texts” and ensuring that they are properly preserved for future generations. One of his biggest finds was unearthing twenty-three dramatic manuscripts from the seventeenth century. While this is one of his largest successes, William Proctor Williams has been salvaging Early Modern texts from being discarded since grad school.

            If we had had more time than the two and a half hours that were set aside for this lecture, I am sure that we would have been treated to a full history of the written word. Williams was extremely thorough during his lecture, and he answered the campers' questions down to the most specific detail. Despite the time constraint, Williams’s lecture covered lots of ground. Williams began his lecture by explaining the evolution of the book, beginning with 3000 BCE and the use of the papyrus scroll. As he described the evolving forms of binding, he passed around a text with a cover made from vellum (calf-skin) on it. With the development of the printing press, he explained, Gutenberg combined the three major technologies of the day. One of these was the type of binding that was in use. Were it not for this shift, Williams said, we would all be vegetarians since the increase of demand for text would have caused veal to disappear altogether!

Williams’s lecture then transitioned from technological developments in printing to the working conditions that Jaggard, the manufacturer of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, would have worked in. The way we think Jaggard’s shop was run worked remained the standard from 1450-1750. His shop is thought to have contained three compositors, one compositor’s apprentice, two pressmen, two or three additional apprentices, a master printer, and a full or part time scribe. The average printer’s workday went from 5am-8pm, during which time they churned out somewhere between 900-1200 copies of a text per day. Ha, and the campers think we work them hard! Learning about the expected productivity of Jaggard’s shop seemed to make everyone a little more appreciative of our own work hours.

Williams ended the lecture explaining that part of working with Shakespeare’s text is learning about the historical conditions in which it was printed. This includes how the printed format that we now work with may have been adapted from the stage to the page.  Williams’s lecture was in-depth and informative. He was able to provide the campers with a vivid image of the history of the book in addition to answering questions that the campers had for him. All in all, it was an immersing and engaging lecture chalked full of information that will be useful to the campers as they work through their text for our upcoming productions!

-Madeleine M. Oulevey

Sonnets are about Love

In ASC Theatre Camp, the night before the last day, we have “Sonnet Night” where every camper and staff member reads a sonnet he or she has written to another member of the camp. It’s a night full of love, usually full of tears and happiness at all we’ve gone through together. Your sonnet partner is secret until the event itself, and people are encouraged to dress up as the person they are celebrating. It’s a pretty wonderful tradition, but it means that people need to be thinking about it early on in the camp. So here are some hints on sonnet writing for any of you interested in joining in on the love.

Some Tips for Sonnet Writing

What is a Sonnet?
A Shakespearean sonnet is a fourteen line poem, in iambic pentameter with three quatrains and a couplet.

Wait, iambic pentameter?
We’ve talked about this a bit in camp already, but just to refresh, iambic pentameter means that there are 10 (or occasionally 11) syllables in every line and that usually syllables 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 are emphasized. For example, “To hear with eyes belongs to love’s fine wit.” In this sentence, the emphasized words (or syllables) are also nice meaningful words, and the connecting words like “to” and “with” have less emphasis.

Three Quatrains and a what?
Quatrains and couplets are terms used in poetry indicating a rhyming pattern. A quatrain is a set of four lines with alternating rhyme (ABAB) and a couplet is just a pair of two lines which rhyme back to back. So the scheme for a (Shakespearean) sonnet is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG or three quatrains and a couplet. Here’s one of Shakespeare’s sonnets if you’d like to follow along:

As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put beside his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
So I for fear of trust, forget to say,
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharged with burthen of mine own love's might:
O let my looks be then the eloquence,
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.
O learn to read what silent love hath writ,
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

What if I can’t find any words that rhyme?
There are lots of rhyming dictionaries online, you can look for some rhymes there.

Anything else I should know?
If you’re stuck for how to organize your sonnet, Shakespeare often uses the first eight lines to ask a question or state one idea. The final six lines can then answer the question or express something different and the final couplet makes sense all by itself. You could even write your final couplet first.

Sonnets in this camp are about the community and learning and love we’ve all had together, so remember that as you write to your secret sonnet-er: sonnets are about love.

Lofton Lake Trip

Hello! This is Emma Lo writing. I'm a former camper who is along for the wild ride as an ASC Theatre Camp Intern this summer!

 After an exhilarating week of auditions, rehearsals, and workshops, the ASC Theater Campers put down their well-used scripts, piled into three white vans, and headed to Lofton Lake this past Sunday for a much deserved day off. Even so, some of the campers still found time between swimming, kayaking and s’mores-devouring to run through their lines and to practice show music.

The Lofton Lake trip occurs annually, thanks to our generous hosts, the Eckmans, a long-time camp family. Perfect for our unceasingly energetic campers, Lofton Lake boasts an array of things to do, with a lake bordered by a beach, more volleyball courts than people to play on them, trails that circumscribe the lake, and a campfire.

We were blessed with perfect weather for the field trip, and the campers spent most of their time in the water. Whether they were engaging in splash battles, trying to capsize the floating dock, or racing canoes, no one stayed dry for long. Back on land, ocarina and mandolin permeated the breeze, and bodies browned, or reddened, while the campers perused novels sub-sun.

The day unveiled many discoveries: one camper can perform outstanding backflips, another found a family of tiny frogs, and another proved that the bottom of the lake is difficult but not impossible to reach. We also discovered that some of the young actors double as skillful sand artists, conjuring mermaids and an octopus out of the shore. Unfortunately, there is currently no foreseeable way to incorporate these talents on the Blackfriars Playhouse stage… 

By mid-afternoon the official “Camp Grillmaster Tom” had prepared a meal of hot dogs, hamburgers, and barbeque for the hungry lot. It was around this time that Mr. Eckman’s pet dogs showed a heightened interest in our presence, as they attempted to taste a little of Tom’s handiwork too.

The change of setting from the camp’s Mary Baldwin campus helped the students gain some perspective. As one camper observed his peers singing together, discussing books and plays, and jamming on guitars, he noted how smart and talented this group of people is. Even outside of rehearsal space, the campers’ collective creativity and passion are evident. 

After a long day, the campers got back on the buses and reluctantly left the lovely Lofton Lake, sufficiently soggier and more refreshed than upon their arrival. But the next morning, wails erupted from the girls’ hallway in the dormitory as campers examined their sun-burned backs in the mirror. Along with warm memories, several also have physical souvenirs from their sun-filled day on Lofton Lake!

Moving Freely

            The workshops held at ASC Theatre Camp  aim to instill a wide variety of skills that are applicable to the performance and understanding of early modern text. Denice Mahler’s dance workshop got the campers working actively on their feet and interacting with the performance space and with each other.  Mahler implemented Anne Bogart’s “Viewpoints” method that provides a concrete way for discussing and acting on movement and gesture. The workshop challenged campers' comfort zones and implemented non-verbal communication, the result of which was a good, clean sweat for all involved.

            We were first charged with moving around the space. What was at first a simple task graduated in complexity, adding new challenges. First, we worked with different levels of speed. Sometimes half of the group worked at minimal speed while others raced about them. It was difficult to control one’s own motions while being aware of those of others, especially when the others were racing about them. The next challenge was moving in a certain pattern. We’d either move in a circular pattern or set to a grid. In doing so, the campers discovered new things about the space. During the group discussion, Marianna Moynihan said that being confined to walking on a grid made her realize the grid like pattern on the ceiling of the space, which she used to guide her movement. Many of the campers claimed that they reacted in a similar fashion: taking cues from the space to guide their action.

            At this point, Mahler added music to the mix. The music ranged from dubstep to smooth jazz to upbeat pop. The result was impressive. As Mahler fed us different directions for how to interact with the space, it became apparent that most of the campers lost any inhibitions about movement that they may have had. Keeping with the idea of making some motions bigger and interacting with the space, action was assigned to one body part, and we would explore out ability to translate it to another body part. The general consensus of the group was that we discovered and worked new muscles that we didn’t know we had!

            When working “freely,” patterns began to take shape. Mahler would gently suggest ways to move: using different levels, speeds, mimicking, etc. What was truly wonderful to see, however, was how relationships began to develop on their own. These exercises were non-verbal, but the campers took the initiative and acted out a variety of motions. Some created characters based on an exaggerated motion. Others worked with space, forming shapes around the scene created by another camper. Many mimicked the motion of another camper, and they were able to move around each others' empty space without verbal communication. The energy and emotion during this exercise was thrilling to witness. Each movement that the campers would go through very much retained their own personal character, but the fluidity of action and variation in movement was astonishing.

            After a brief and well-earned water break, we began a new group exercise. Walking in a circle, we were made to jump on the count of three. The goal of this exercise was to land at the same time and as soundlessly as possible. When we had completed this task, we were made to do it again without being prompted by Mahler’s counting. After a few unsuccessful attempts, we were able to all jump and land as a group at the same time without any verbal communication whatsoever.

            Our final exercise for the dance workshop was to create a series of five tableaus, or still images, to present to the group. We divided up into groups of four and picked a fairy tale that the group would then have to guess. These tableaus were silent and still with only actions to hint at what fairy tale it was to the audience. The viewpoints exercises that addressed shape came in handy here, since the campers had to become scenery as well as characters. In one group, we saw campers become a fire, a ship, and a crocodile in their series of images. Despite the fact that the workshop was tiring and intense, the general consensus was that the two hour long workshop flew by. 

Madeleine M. Oulevey

---

Text and Silence

In camp the days are long and full, but the weeks are short. I’m back again to write about some of the joys of the end of our first week, but expect more posts quite soon. This post will give you a peek into Thursday and Friday morning of this past week, and it will also give you a chance to see some of the spectrum of work we accomplish in this camp; how we tell stories with our bodies and with our words onstage, and how closely those two things are connected.

Thursday morning, Dr. Ralph Alan Cohen, Co-founder and Director of Mission of the American Shakespeare Center, came to talk with all the campers. He began his lecture by getting to know the campers, asking who they are, where they’re from, remembering the past roles of the returning campers, and welcoming them to Staunton. His lecture focused on scansion and rhetoric, the nuts and bolts of Shakespeare’s text, so he taught about how exciting iambic pentameter can be if you take advantage of all the head starts Shakespeare gives you in the way he wrote his lines. With the students up out of their seats and into a row showing the syllables of a line of text, he had them stand or sit as they spoke the appropriate stressed or unstressed syllables. We started by examining some famous examples, “To be or not to be that is the question” or “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” and then the campers started calling out lines of their own. Mari, playing Tybalt, suggested, “What art thou drawn among these heartless hinds?” and from that place we started to talk about Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting, and Cohen coached Jon and Aubrey through those lines. In the middle of a rowdy party, Romeo and Juliet make poetry together. In Shakespeare’s words, we can follow not only as the two young lovers hold each other’s hands and kiss but as they get into each other’s rhyme scheme, into each other’s quatrains and finally into each other’s lines.

Cohen also shared some ideas for perform rhyme, asking the campers who has a rhyme they’d like to share, and Madison, jumped in with “I'll do my best/To woo your lady: yet, a barful strife!/Whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife.” Instead of trying to mask the awkwardness of a sudden rhyme in lines which hadn’t rhymed until this point, Cohen gives the analogy of tossing up a baseball for yourself to hit. Throw your first rhyming word up so the audience can notice it, and send it home with the second rhyming word.

The last section of the lecture was on figures of speech and Shakespeare’s use of rhetoric. We delved into questions of what ways do different people talk? What does it mean for Kings to aggrandize themselves by using more words than necessary? What does it mean when characters chop words out of their sentences rather than speaking every word in full? What about characters that change the order of sentences? What does Yoda accomplish by saying the ends of his sentences before the beginnings?

When Cohen lectures, he always encourages the students to think more, look for more, find more in the performance of text. In Tom Dumontier’s workshop on neutral mask, the campers were expanding other boundaries in their imaginations, as Tom asked them again to see not what they could add, but what they could take away from their silent performances.

Working with masks can be very emotional business, as many of the campers noted in the times of reflection, “everyone wears masks, all the time, so sometimes wearing an actual mask can give you a lot of freedom. You can be anyone, or do anything and no one will judge.” This workshop is riveting to watch, as acting alone or in small groups, Tom led the campers through different exercises. Some exercises were very simple, (walk up, sit in the chair, walk back) and some were grand adventures involving fire and mountains and deserts and seas, all experiences from a base of neutrality. How would you behave neutrally if fire raged around you? If you were a robot? If you were a pregnant woman? Always the emphasis is learning from the inside out. What goes on inside you under the blank face? Where can you find stillness? How still can you be? For how long? How does that affect the people around you?

The last part of the workshop was set to music, many different types of music played immediately after each other, and every camper moved in a part of a large group improvisation. Some danced. Some crouched. Some claimed the sun as their own. Some played guitars in the slowest of slow motion. Some moved through yoga poses. Some faced each other and sized each other up. Some moved off of each other’s movements. Some stared off in perfect stillness gazing into the future and the past.

To me, it seemed that the scansion and rhetoric lecture and the neutral mask workshop were perfectly paired. They both focused on specificity, and making use of the tools available to you in performance, be that your own body and memory or Shakespeare’s craft of words. They stretched these young actors’ capabilities and challenged them to challenge themselves. Both classes equipped the students to be better actors, in speech and silence.

Double Dose of Music

We’re still in only our first week of the camps, and already all the campers have gone through two music workshops, with Greg Phelps and Jake Mahler respectively. These two actors work  for the American Shakespeare Center, and both help to organize and perform the music in the shows.

In Greg’s music workshops, he opens by asking, “Why is there music?” and gets the campers to share why they think people make music. Toni suggested that it seems like an imitation of nature, of birds singing, the rhythms of trees and water. “Music is to carry history, to help people remember through generations” said Allegra, another camper. Cam thought it could be to “express yourself” or “to communicate,” and we all agreed that people can be united or divided over music. For its use in theater, music is “infectious” and communicates “unspoken adjectives” which can present the emotional content of the scene or the play.

From this conversation about the philosophy of music, we turned to the elements of music, and discussed what makes up music, exploring questions such as if major or minor keys actually make a song sound sad or happy. Then we read through the text of all the songs in the plays we’re doing in this camp (there are quite a few) and made some discoveries about structure and form and how that might apply to a song, so that in the last section of the workshop we all made up a song together. For Greg’s first workshop we created “O Mistress Mine” from Twelfth Night. With Toni and Emily (one of our counselors) on guitar, Dan on uke, a trio of strings, and many voices singing, we put together a beautiful little song.

In Jake’s music workshop, the class started with a whole lot of questions. What do you think about when you hear the word “music?” When do you listen to music? Do you have a particular song that “you just need to listen to” when you’re feeling a particular way? When? Do you have specific memories associated with a particular song? Can you think of a spot in a movie that you “cannot imagine” without music? All of these questions yielded enthusiastic conversation and helped the campers think about this nebulous thing we call music which surrounds us and fills our lives, but which doesn’t usually engage all of our cognitive energy. Next, Jake showed three different movie clips, each using music quite differently, and he asked the campers what the music was telling us in each of these clips. In scary movies, it’s the music that makes our hair stand on end; in happy movies, the soundtrack is often the reason we know it’s a happy movie just from the opening credits; and in a romantic (or sad) movie, the music can spark our emotional responses in powerful ways.

In the rest of the workshop, we talked about the ways the ASC uses music, complete with performances from Jake and Dan, one of our counselors who just toured with Jake this past year. We made our own playlists of what songs we would do for Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night if we had the option, and then we talked about where songs live in popular culture and how that affects our understanding of them. What would it do to the play if a production used Katy Perry’s “Firework” as the tune and harmony for the fairies’ lullaby in A Midsummer Night’s Dream? We talked about different styles of music and what they each bring to text. Then all the campers were divided into four groups, and each of the groups created their own song using text from Twelfth Night in four assigned styles: Country, Blues, Gospel, and Alternative Indie Punk. The performances of these four little songs were so much fun for everyone. Jake made sure to mention that we should all be excellent audience members, supporting our fellow actors, and the campers really took it to heart, clapping and even singing along on occasion.

So that’s our news from some music workshops. If you’re interested to hear a little of the music we made up Greg’s second workshop here is a bit of the Mariner's song from Gallathea. Many thanks to Madeline for the file!

Rocks, shelves, and sands, and seas, farewell!

Fie! Who would dwell

In such a hell

As is a ship, which drunk does reel,

Taking salt healths from deck to keel.

Up were we swallowed in wet graves,

All soused in waves,

By Neptune's slaves.

What shall we do, being tossd to shore?

Milk some blind tavern, and there roar.

'Tis brave, my boys, to sail on land,

For being well manned,

We can cry "Stand!"

The trade of pursing ne'er shall fail

Until the hangman cries, "Strike sail"!.

Rove, then, no matter whither,

In fair or stormy weather.

And as we live, lets die together.

One hempen caper cuts a feather.

Say Hello to my Little Clown Friend

Hi, I’m Madeleine M. Oulevey, one of the camp interns for this summer. Working with the American Shakespeare Center and so many talented young adults is quickly shaping up to be the highlight of my summer. Camp has only just started up, but preparations for the three shows that ASCTC culminates in are very much underway. Our directors have cast the shows, the casts have gone through their first read-throughs, and the kids are heading off to meet with their directors for their first official rehearsal. 

 

Along with getting the opportunity to work with Shakespeare’s text and to perform it in Blackfriars Playhouse, campers also attend workshops in various fields. These workshops aim to teach the campers some techniques that help facilitate their understanding of the text and how to approach it in performance.  Symmonie Preston led one of the two workshops held this morning. Entitled “Say Hello to my Little Clown Friend”, the workshop allowed the campers to discover their alternate “clown selves” and to interact with everyday objects in a different way.  After donning a red clown nose, the campers transformed into friendly, inquisitive, newborn beings, curious of the world around them. Our new clowns interacted with common objects, such as chairs, as if they had never seen them before. They played around with them and acted out different scenarios as they learned about their new environment.

After making new friends with inanimate objects and learning about “the other red nosed people,” our clowns took off their noses and became their former selves. In groups of three or four, the campers read through truncated scenes of Shakespearean text, alternating who was the clown in the group. The campers soon discovered that when all involved are clowns, things can get pretty loud and hard to follow! With one clown to help guide the action, the result is not only entertaining and understandable, but can also highlight the solemnity of a soliloquy that might follow in the next scene.  

Shakespeare has literal clowns in his plays, but in some scenes we read, the clown in question was surprising. For example, we had three campers play a scene from Richard II. Herein, the Duchess of York, a dignified lady pleading for her son’s life, was the primary clown. The scene is serious, but the actor portraying the Duchess made the needs of the character more evident by incorporating clown-like aspects into his performance. The overall lesson being: clowns are sometimes located where you’d least expect them.

Watching the campers interact with their new world and implement what they had learned into their performance was both entertaining and hilarious. Each camper was able to apply his or her natural humor and turn complicated text into intelligible physical comedy. 

--Madeleine M. Oulevey

Auditions and Dramaturgy

Hello! This is Clara Giebel, back again for another summer of blogging about the ASC Theatre Camps. We’re only a couple days in, and already we have settled ourselves into Mary Baldwin College campus, climbed hundreds of stairs, laughed, smiled, made new friends, and caught up with friends from the past. Additionally, we have made it through auditions, casting, and our first read-through of the plays, all with much laughter and enthusiasm. 


I love auditions in this camp because they overflow with trust, love, and potential. Monday morning we opened with Symmonie Preston, our new Director of College Prep Programs,  leading the campers to give and receive their trust to each other. Standing in a circle, the campers and all the staff promised to each other, “If you fall I will catch you.” Rather than beginning with aggressiveness or vicious competition, we started with trust and went from there. The audition progressed from trust to love, as the counselors taught all the campers a musical round to the words of Hamlet’s poem,

Doubt thou the stars are fire,

Doubt thou the sun doth move,

Doubt truth to be a liar

But never doubt I love.

Once they’d learned the song, the campers broke into little groups of three or four, then each group performed the song with their own interpretation. One trio meowed their song instead of singing it. One trio impersonated Charlie’s Angels. One trio made their song into a story of rejected love. Other groups choreographed dance moves or broke into harmony. We heard the same song at least fifteen times, and I don’t think any of us watching had any opportunity to get bored. 

After the song, the campers did a series of movement centered performances based off of some lines of each of the three plays, and finally all the campers performed their ten lines of prepared text. It is such a privilege to be in a room surrounded by young people who are just brimming with enthusiasm for Shakespeare and his language. We are all flying on potential at this point in the camp, imagining the fantastic things that these young people will achieve, readying ourselves for the work ahead to make the ideas come true. 

Before I leave off for today, I wanted to answer some possible queries about the dramaturgy of this camp. The difficulty in explaining “dramaturgy” lies in the abundance of definitions. For an exuberant list of some possible answers to the question, “what is dramaturgy?” you can explore the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America (LMDA) website: http://www.lmda.org/what-dramaturgy-few-possibilities. Usually, a dramaturg assists a production by doing research so that the the actors and directors have a strong foundation in the text and context of the play. For our camps, the dramaturgs gloss (add in the footnotes for) our cut scripts, put together a binder full of pictures and historical backgrounds, provide some literary analysis of the plays, and attend the rehearsals to stay right in the middle of the action. 

That’s all for now, but please keep checking back for more throughout the week. Our regular schedule begins on Tuesday!

Introducing the 2012 American Shakespeare Center Theatre Camp

It's very nearly that time again! The American Shakespeare Center Theatre Camp starts up this Sunday with Session 1. This program offers summer Shakespeare intensives for ages 13-18 (residential or day camp). In each three-week session, campers participate in performance master classes (stage combat, dance, music, acrobatics); attend academic classes (theatre history, scansion/rhetoric, source study); visit the Blackfriars Playhouse to watch the professional Resident and Touring Troupe actors rehearse and perform in our summer season of plays; and they finish the experience off by performing in an hour-long version of a Shakespeare play on the stage of the Blackfriars Playhouse.

2011 Campers performing Christopher Marlowe's Dido, Queen of Carthage

This year, the camp moves to Mary Baldwin College, taking advantage of the wealth of opportunities there. Participants in ASC Theatre Camp are taught by ASC Education staff, graduate students from MBC's MLitt/MFA in Shakespeare in Performance Program, and professional artists and educators from our acting troupes. Our vibrant community of Shakespeare enthusiasts welcomes campers to a wonderful world of intense play – we hope you can join us to celebrate their hard work during their showcases on July 8th and August 5th! The shows for this year are:

Session 1: June 17 – July 8, 2012

• Twelfth Night is a cross-dressing romp with hidden depths of emotion. Finding herself stranded after a shipwreck, Viola disguises herself as a boy to serve the Count Orsino, with whom she falls in love. Unfortunately, Orsino is in love with the Lady Olivia, who then falls for Viola in her guise as Cesario. Their romantic entanglements are further complicated by the antics of Olivia's household, who convince her steward, Malvolio, to make a fool out of himself, and by the reappearance of Viola's lost twin, Sebastian. Love letters, poor swordsmanship, joyful reunions, and yellow stockings ensue.
  Director: Amanda McRaven was the director of YCTC from 2001-2004. She is SO EXCITED to return this summer. Since leaving ASC, she earned an MFA in Directing and a Fulbright in Community-based Performance in New Zealand. She works with all kinds of actors and all kinds of theater, but Shakespeare with teenagers is still and always will be the truest thing she does.
• Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare's most famous tale of love gone wrong, where comedy and tragedy collide. Two teenagers defy their families to be together, but the tangle of rivalries, feuds, and hot tempers leads to a bloody chain reaction of revenge. Romeo and Juliet features some of Shakespeare's most beautiful and romantic verse, but it's also packed with rollicking comedy, from witty Mercutio to the dryly disapproving Friar Laurence, from the effusive Nurse to the rowdy servants. Vows of love, vicious duels, larks, tombs, and passions ensue.
  Director: Sara Holdren is a director, actor, and designer whose love affair with Shakespeare started early and blazed into life at YCTC (now ASCTC) when she was fifteen. She has trained at RADA and received her BA in Theater Studies from Yale University. This fall she will begin an MFA in Directing at Yale School of Drama. She has directed Shakespeare's The Tempest, Richard III, Henry IV, and As You Like It, as well as Red Noses by Peter Barnes and He Who Gets Slapped by Leonid Andreyev.
• Gallathea by John Lyly is a doubling of mistaken-identity confusion. When the god Neptune demands that a town sacrifice their most beautiful maiden to a sea monster, two fathers disguise their daughters as boys and pack them off into the wilderness -- where they promptly fall in love with each other, each thinking the other is actually a boy. Meanwhile, Cupid tricks a flock of Diana's nymphs into falling madly in love, despite their vows of chastity, and a trio of apprentices try out every occupation they can think of in search of their destinies. Failed sacrifices, love-knots, alchemy, and general hilarity ensue.
  Director: Chelsea Phillips is a graduate of the MFA program in Shakespeare and Performance at Mary Baldwin College. She is currently a third-year PhD student at Ohio State University, where she has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company to introduce their Stand Up for Shakespeare program into local K-12 classrooms. 

  

  2011 Campers performing William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale

Session 2: July 15 – August 5, 2012

• Much Ado about Nothing is a witty comedy about finding love and growing up. The young Count Claudio wins the hand of the beautiful heiress Hero. Hero's cousin Beatrice and Claudio's friend Benedick can never meet without verbally sparring, so their friends and family conspire to trick them into falling in love with each other. The tale turns dark when Claudio spurns Hero, falsely believing her to have been unfaithful. With Hero seeming dead and Claudio unrepentant, Beatrice must convince Benedick to prove himself worthy of her love by standing up for what's right. Deceptions, redemptions, bumbling constables, and some of the best quips in Shakespeare ensue.
  Director: Daniel Kennedy has worked as an actor, writer, director and teacher in his 19 years as a theatre professional. Daniel has worked internationally with Australian street performance group CHROME, LIVING SCULPTURES in The Netherlands and Les Ballet C de la B in Belgium.  Daniel is also the founder and artistic director of The Wooden Spoon Theatre Company, whose mission is to obliterate mundanity through random acts of chaotic joy.  As a long time actor with the ASC, Daniel has always enjoyed the playful innovation of the ASCTC and is looking forward to being a part of it.
• Henry VI, Part 1 kicks off Shakespeare's first tetralogy, which will end with the machinations of Richard III. With a child-king on the English throne, the nobles of England must scramble to keep from losing everything that Henry V won. Their task is complicated by the emergence of Joan of Arc, who rallies the French to unexpected victories -- but is Joan a holy visionary, or a fraudulent sorceress? One of Shakespeare's earliest plays, Henry VI, Part 1 shows the young playwright beginning to experiment with his use of language. Battles, scheming, sieges, and demon-summoning ensue.
  Director: Jeremy West: This summer marks Jeremy's 5th show as a Director for ASCTC as well as his 6th teaching the stage combat class.  Jeremy is a veteran of the ASC having worked with the company, off and on, since 2004 as:   Actor, Assistant Director, Fight Director, and Fight Captain.  He holds an MFA from the University of Exeter, England, and has recognized fight training, and awards, from the Society of American Fight Directors and the British Academy of Dramatic Combat, as well as over 10 years experience teaching and choreographing for the stage. His other credits include stage and film work from:  Virginia Shakespeare Festival; Shakespeare Theatre, D.C.; Virginia Stage Company; Vanguard Theatre Company, and others.
• A King and No King by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher is a powerful Jacobean tragicomedy, blending boisterous humor with political drama. King Arbaces, returning from war, not only discovers that his mother tried to overthrow him in his absence, but also begins to suffer an inconvenient passion for his sister, Panthea; so too does the captured king Tigranes, whose current lover doesn't think much of his changing opinion. Arbaces eventually determines to deal with the problem by killing everyone involved, including himself, when fate intervenes to make all well. Elaborate hoaxes, amorous verse, moral quandaries, and royal successions ensue.
  Director: Riley Steiner has been an actor, director and playwright for longer than she cares to admit. She decided to grow up and go back to school to pursue her MFA in Shakespeare here at Mary Baldwin College. She is thrilled to be back this summer for more ASC Theatre Camp.

From the Session 2 Finale, 2011

 We're looking forward to a great summer -- Follow this blog for further updates!