2012 Student Shakespeare Seminar

Get ready to go!

• World-class performances of Romeo & Juliet and As You Like It! 
• Backstage tours of all three theaters!
• Seminar notebook and Bible-based teaching & discussion   
• Completion Certificate if you want transcript credit 
• And not to forget the 2012 S4B T-shirt!

It's coming August 23-24.  Click here for more info!

Romeo & Juliet: Sexual Propriety and Impropriety

In an earlier post I generalized that Shakespeare typically shows his upper class characters adhering to much higher standards of sexual behavior than the “servant class” does. In Romeo and Juliet, this difference is not as much a social class distinction as it is a marker of sincere love contrasted with crude shallowness.

Romeo’s companions (with the possible exception of Benvolio) engage in the equivalent of boys’ locker room humor, as do the young men of the opposing house of Capulet. In the dramatic structure of the play this creates a shady, worldly backdrop that in turn makes the idealized love of Romeo and Juliet shine all the brighter.

The play can be directed in a style that moderates this contrast by deemphasizing the immature male joking (much of which can be lost in the “translation” to a modern audience anyway). The 2012 production on the Ashland stage, however, sometimes underlines the coarse humor through inflection and gesture. It will be helpful for viewers to understand Shakespeare’s purpose in these scenes in order to appreciate the innocence and comparative maturity of the famous young couple’s romance.

See Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s own description of the age-appropriateness of their 2012 Romeo & Juliet at www.osfashland.org/education/teachers/recommendations.aspx#Play1. On the same web page you will find descriptions of their other plays also, including As You Like It.)

Summer Seminar in Ashland - 2012

The Shakespeare plays for next summer have been announced, but the rotation of performance dates has not. Until that information is out, I can't choose the dates for the seminar, but I can tell you that I'm hoping the schedule will allow us to see Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It on our two-day, one-night trip. That would give us one of the Bard's most popular tragedies and one of his most popular comedies, besides giving us one play in the newly-repaired state-of-the-art indoor "Bowmer" theater (R&J) and one in the jewel of the Festival, the outdoor "Elizabethan" (AYLI). An outstanding selection of plays! Pray for that to work out, and keep an eye on this blog for the answer to your prayers!

Oregon Shakespeare Festival

I graduated high school in 1964 with a few honors, but with no affection for the works of Shakespeare. However, the good news is that I met a new friend that summer, who would later be promoted to the high status of brother-in-law, and one day he said, "Hey, let's drive to Ashland and see a play."

"Drive 300 miles to see a play?" I snorted. "We can't find a play somewhere here in Portland?" Fortunately, Jim prevailed over my worse judgment, and before long we were sitting under the stars in the Elizabethan Theatre of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The play was Merchant of Venice, the first Shakespeare play I had ever literally seen. I may have missed a summer during my impoverished college days, but other than that it's been an unbroken string of annual visits, usually multiple visits, first with my bride (the other great benefit I derived indirectly from Jim's friendship), and then with our children and lots of other people's children who have been my English and Drama students over the years.

Shakespeare's plays were not written to be read (they were deliberately not published so that rival companies could not easily pirate them), but to be seen. English teachers, do your best to get students into the theatres where those plays are being performed, wherever you might live and whatever the level of acting proficiency you can find. If you're close enough to Southern Oregon to make Ashland your destination—and groups from several surrounding states seem to think they are close enough—then please do your best. This Shakespeare Festival, born in 1935, has received a deluge of awards including a Broadway-based Tony Award for best regional theatre. Visit the website to see what's going on there currently and what they're planning for next year. (The Festival has expanded to include works by many other playwrights as well, but their Shakespeare productions continue to be the heart of the Ashland experience.)

I like to tell the story of the one time my wife and I visited London, and one of our must-see attractions was the reconstructed Globe Theatre, on the very site of Shakespeare's original structure. We had watched a very few minutes of Macbeth when we whispered to each other almost simultaneously, "Ashland is better."

After accompanying students to probably 100 performances at the Festival's three theatres over (thus far) 40 years, I'm just here to give you my personal and professional recommendation of this great educational resource. Be circumspect about the moral tone of any particular production you might be considering (Shakespeare wrote virtually no stage directions, so directors have a very free hand about staging, costuming, etc.) but you would exercise that kind of caution about any play you were taking students to, wouldn't you? The Festival does pretty well at giving recommendations on age-appropriateness, I can sometimes give more detailed guidance in that department, and of course we always welcome "reviews from you's" after you've seen a production.

For those of you who live close enough to consider it, you might also look into our Shakespeare 4 Believers summer seminar trips.

And finally, if you live outside of God's Country in the Northwest, you probably have other theatres you can explore and recommend. Let us hear from you!