The pace is brisk as ever at 70 Kemble St. Shakespeare & Company has announced plans for new walking trails and summer programs, in the midst of their first Fall Festival on their own ground, in the Founder’s Theatre.
Christopher Sink, managing director, said Shakespeare & Co. has taken its first step toward a series of walking trails that will link the property to downtown Lenox. Shakespeare & Co. has received a grant from the state Department of Environmental Management, through a recreational trails program, for $35,000. They plan to begin with paths on the northern 15 acres of the Kemble Street property, up by Springlawn. They would like the whole campus to be permeable eventually, Sink said: a park-like place where people can stroll and encounter Shakespeare and the company, face to face and by surprise. Shakespeare & Co. is working with Peter Jensen at Openspace Management to design the paths, and they hope to build them next summer.
Educating teachers
Mary Hartman, director of education, has summer plans in another direction. The National Endowment for the Humanities has given Shakespeare & Co. a grant for a four-week summer institute for school teachers, like those they used to conduct from 1988-1996. The summer 2002 institute will be Shakespeare and the Rose Playhouse.
Twenty-five teachers, Shakespeare & Co. faculty, and outside scholars will meet to discuss two of Shakespeare’s plays in the context of performance in an Elizabethan playhouse. They will ask how that context influences the way the plays should be taught. Specifically, they will envision those plays staged at the Rose Theatre, and its effect on the way they were written.
An Elizabethan theater was really a small performance space without technology, where the actors stood close to audience, Hartman said. In fact, it was similar to a classroom. “Teachers say, ‘I can’t use performance in my classroom because I can’t get into the theater’ — they can’t say that anymore!†she said.
Fall Festival of Shakespeare
Celia Madeoy, one of two Shakespeare & Co. directors at Mount Everett High School, and Mark Woollett, the Fall Festival coordinator, joined Hartman to talk about a more current spark in the Kemble Street hearth. Berkshire high schools have performed their marathon of Fall Festival plays in the Berkshire Community College theater since the Shakespeare & Co. began the festival, because The Mount had no stage large enough for it. This year, for the first time, Shakespeare & Co. will host the festival on its own grounds, in the Founder’s Theatre.
Hartman said Shakespeare & Co. has loved performing at BCC, and she is extremely grateful to have had such a long, productive relationship with the college. A parent spoke to her about A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Mount this summer; he said his daughter had played Titania in Midsummer at the Fall Festival last year, and gotten to say, “Will we sing and bless this place,†over the BCC stage. It meant a lot to her, he said, to be able to say goodbye to it that way.
Hartman said places can be very important. She is excited now that students can develop this kind of relationship with the Shakespeare & Co. theater. The festival is “a living, breathing, changing, growing entity,†she said. “It could not survive otherwise.†It has advanced a step in its growth.
Woollett said it is also different to see a show in a theater in which you have acted. Students who come to see other plays in the Founder’s Theatre will feel a camaraderie with the actors on a stage they have walked.
Staging 10 different plays at Founder’s Theatre has presented its challenges. Founder’s is not set up as a regular proscenium stage. The theater has no wing space for props and exits, no fly system to loft sets off the stage. It is smaller than BCC, and ill hold a lot less scenery. Madeoy said, though, that a play with simpler sets often makes up for them with more heart. In the past, the dozen schools in the festival have shared a common set, and designed their own additions to it. The common set is the theater itself.
Since the theater belongs to Shakespeare & Co., though, the directors have had more time to coordinate with each other. At BCC, Woollett said, they could not get there before Sunday morning to set up. Directors have much more time for technical rehearsals, at Founder’s. Directors have to share light settings, and use only a few simple ones. They recently held a show-and-tell to see what their options were — cool wash, dawn, sunset. But this year, they could also prepare an share a few special light settings, because they had so much time to work with the theater itself.
Hartman said it is especially exciting to have a theater in which to train designers.
Kids working on lighting and sound in the Fall Festival now ideal for assistants in summer season. The BCC theater system was always wildly different from any system at the Mount.
Cozy confines
In the Founder’s Theatre, actors will also find themselves less than 10 feet from audience — at times less than two feet. The relationship between the audience and actors much more immediate and intimate, Hartman said. This is exciting for the students: “I’ve never seen more supportive, engaged audiences than those at the festival — it’s like a rock concert,†she said.
This intimacy is more Shakespearean than a traditional stage. The actors are dealing with the audience as another player, Hartman said. monologues are suddenly conversations with the audience, and the actors stand close enough to see their reactions in their faces.
High schools perform their plays both at the Founder’s Theatre and at their own school theaters. They have had to translate elements of the Founder’s Theatre into their school performances. Some have invited the audience on stage.
Shakespeare & Co. has removed seating and upstage canvassing for the festival. Founder’s has a thrust stage with audience seating on both sides. This may be cozy, Hartman said. BCC seated 510; Founder’s seats 468 at most. Luckily, she said, Founder’s has bench seating: “We can mush people in!†Founder’s has less storage space than BCC too — Shakespeare & Co. will be renting a Ryder truck for the festival. Students will be warming up at Lawrence Hall, on the Kemble Street campus, and proceeding to the Founder’s Theatre in costume before their shows.
The directors have also had had to rethink the festival’s traditional closing Pavane. They do not have room to invite 500 students to dance on the Founder’s stage. They have replaced the dance with a Reverence, a closing ritual often used at the end of dancing classes. They choreographed a series of movements for the students to follow where they stand. Madeoy said they are also incorporating the Reverence into ongoing work in elementary and middle schools.
And in that vein, Shakespeare & Co. continues to expand its educational programming. They are adding a Shakespeare & Young Company session in the spring this year for kids who want to do something more with Shakespeare when the festival is over.
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Winter Storm Warning Issued for Berkshires
Another snowstorm is expected to move through the region overnight on Friday, bringing 5 to 8 inches of snow. This is updated from Thursday's winter weather advisory.
The National Weather Service in Albany, N.Y., has posted a winter storm warning for all of Berkshire County and parts of eastern New York State beginning Friday at 4 p.m. through Saturday at 1 p.m.
The region could see heavy to moderate snowfall rates of 1 to 2 inches per hour overnight, tapering off Saturday morning to flurries.
Drivers should exercise caution on Friday night and Saturday morning, as travel conditions may be hazardous.
Saturday night should be clear and calm, but warming temperatures means freezing rain Sunday night and rain through Monday with highs in the 40s. The forecast isn't much better through the week as temperatures dip back into the teens with New Year's Eve looking cloudy and frigid.
Samuel Currence served his country in the Air Force with distinction, professionalism and unparalleled humility from 1962 to 1985, retiring as a technical sergeant. click for more
Many homeowners are showing their holiday spirit by decorating their houses. We asked for submissions so those in the community can check out these fanciful lights and decor when they're out.
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