Settling in: Shakespeare & Company stretches its wings on Kemble Street

12:00AM / Friday, November 16, 2001Print Story | Email Story

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 Founderâ€™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 Shakespeareâ€™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. â€œTeachers say, â€˜I canâ€™t use performance in my classroom because I canâ€™t get into the theaterâ€™ â€” they canâ€™t say that anymore!â€ 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 Founderâ€™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 Nightâ€™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, â€œWill we sing and bless this place,â€ 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 â€œa living, breathing, changing, growing entity,â€ she said. â€œIt could not survive otherwise.â€ 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 Founderâ€™s Theatre will feel a camaraderie with the actors on a stage they have walked. Staging 10 different plays at Founderâ€™s Theatre has presented its challenges. Founderâ€™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 Founderâ€™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 â€” 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 Founderâ€™s Theatre, actors will also find themselves less than 10 feet from audience â€” 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: â€œIâ€™ve never seen more supportive, engaged audiences than those at the festival â€” itâ€™s like a rock concert,â€ 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 Founderâ€™s Theatre and at their own school theaters. They have had to translate elements of the Founderâ€™s Theatre into their school performances. Some have invited the audience on stage. Shakespeare & Co. has removed seating and upstage canvassing for the festival. Founderâ€™s has a thrust stage with audience seating on both sides. This may be cozy, Hartman said. BCC seated 510; Founderâ€™s seats 468 at most. Luckily, she said, Founderâ€™s has bench seating: â€œWe can mush people in!â€ Founderâ€™s has less storage space than BCC too â€” 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 Founderâ€™s Theatre in costume before their shows. The directors have also had had to rethink the festivalâ€™s traditional closing Pavane. They do not have room to invite 500 students to dance on the Founderâ€™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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McCann Recognizes Superintendent Award Recipient

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
05:32PM / Tuesday, December 23, 2025

Landon LeClair and Superintendent James Brosnan with Landon's parents Eric and Susan LeClair, who is a teacher at McCann.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Superintendent's Award has been presented to Landon LeClair, a senior in McCann Technical School's advanced manufacturing course.

The presentation was made last Thursday by Superintendent Jame Brosnan after Principal Justin Kratz read from teachers' letters extolling LeClair's school work, leadership and dedication.

"He's become somewhat legendary at the Fall State Leadership Conference for trying to be a leader at his dinner table, getting an entire plate of cookies for him and all his friends," read Kratz to chuckles from the School Committee. "Landon was always a dedicated student and a quiet leader who cared about mastering the content."

LeClair was also recognized for his participation on the school's golf team and for mentoring younger teammates.

"Landon jumped in tutoring the student so thoroughly that the freshman was able to demonstrate proficiency on an assessment despite the missed class time for golf matches," read Kratz.

The principal noted that the school also received feedback from LeClair's co-op employer, who rated him with all fours.

"This week, we sent Landon to our other machine shop to help load and run parts in the CNC mill," his employer wrote to the school. LeClair was so competent the supervisor advised the central shop might not get him back.

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