JACKSON – Nearly 10,000 Michigan high school students experienced the passion and drama of The Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet in the manner William Shakespeare intended – through a live performance – as part of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival’s ShortShakes Tour, which concluded its 2011 spring season this week.
The ShortShakes Tour traveled to 36 high schools in Calhoun, Ingham, Jackson, Livingston, Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw, and Wayne counties from February 11 through June 3.
"Every school we've played has already voiced interest in bringing us back-- this kind of response to Shakespeare is more gratifying than we can possibly say," Michigan Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Janice L. Blixt said. "The Company is just so gratified by the reactions of the students after the show: the comments during the Q&A are excited and positive and the students express so much interest in Shakespeare and reading and seeing more of it."
The show was trimmed down to about 95 minutes in order to better fit within the school day and was set as Shakespeare’s own company would have performed it: without a set and with a mixture of "period" props and costumes with modern pieces.
In many schools, the performance was used to bolster the curriculum of freshman English classes, where reading of the play has been a staple for years. At other schools, the play was an entirely new experience.
"We played one school that hadn't yet read the play (they read it later in the spring) -- when Romeo kills himself, the silence in that room of 350 students was chilling," Blixt said. "And there were actually girls crying when Juliet stabbed herself. These students were really seeing it all for the first time -- they didn't even know how it ended. And they absolutely loved it. It reminds us why we do Shakespeare 400 years later."
East Jackson High School teacher Ray Hill, whose school hosted the ShortShakes Tour in mid-April, said the performance was extremely popular among students there.
"It’s one thing to read a play, it’s another to see it acted out and come alive on stage," Hill said. "We had a positive reaction from of the kids. In fact, I still have kids stopping me in the hallway, thanking me for bringing it into the school."
Matthew Andersen of Ann Arbor and Sarah Leahy of Dearborn were cast in the title roles for the second consecutive season. The 2011 cast also included Jay Donley of St. Joseph (Mercutio), Rick Eva of Canton (Peter/Montague), Dennis Kleinsmith of Lathrup Village (Capulet), Ramona Lucius of Detroit (Nurse), Ty Mitchell of Ann Arbor (Benvolio), Allyson Ortwein of Sterling Heights (Lady Capulet), Jeffrey Booth Stringer of Jackson (the Friar), and Torrey Wigfield of Ann Arbor (Tybalt). Tour understudies included Brooklyn Dimitrie, Stephanie VanAlstine, and Jamie Weeder of Ann Arbor; and Joseph Fournier, Michael Powers, and Chris Sweet of Ypsilanta. The company was rounded out by Stefanie Din of Romeo as the tour’s Technical Director, with Stringer serving as the Tour Coordinator.
Started in 2010 as a 10-performance pilot program in Jackson and Washtenaw counties, the ShortShakes Tour was expanded in 2011 to include 35 performances – reaching nearly 10,000 students – as MSF, the Official Shakespeare Festival of the State of Michigan, significantly extended its educational outreach in support of its annual summer season of professional Shakespeare productions.
Founded in 1995, the Michigan Shakespeare Festival has entertained nearly 45,000 people of all ages during its traditional summer season. It has grown from a humble, single-week attraction with local amateur performers to a four-week, 23-show event featuring regional professional actors, playing to rave reviews each summer.
Romantic Comedy, French Farce, and Dreamy Enchantment are on the agenda this summer for the Michigan Shakespeare Festival’s 17th season. Fan favorite Much Ado About Nothing will anchor two plays new to the Festival: Moliere’s Tartuffe and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. MSF’s professional Shakespearean company will run all three shows in rotating repertory from July 14-August 7 at the Jackson Community College Potter Center.