Shakespeare Circus Day

on May 12, 2007 The Weston Playhouse and the New England Youth Theatre Presented:
A Shakespeare Circus Day for High School Students at NEYT, 10-5 PM May 12, 2007

Workshop Leaders:

Peter Gould has studied and performed clowning in Latin and South America and across the USA. He is a published author and has directed dozens of Shakespeare Plays. He and Stephen Stearns founded the NEYT "Get Thee To The Funnery" Shakespeare Camp in 1996. Peter has since founded and run "Get Thee To the Funnery" camps in Craftsbury, Chelsea and Tunbridge, Vermont. Peter has a doctorate from Brandies University in theatre for social change.

Peter Gould's Workshop is titled: Getting fizzical with Shakespeare
A wild, funny and fun one-hour workshop on how to use breath discovery focus escalation and pay off to bring Shakespeare's words into your powerful body and exciting movement.

Stephen Stearns is the founder and Artistic Director of the New England Youth Theatre. He has a Doctorate in Shakespeare from the University of Washington and a Post Doctorate in acting from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) in England. He has been directing Shakespeare and performing comic and dramatic plays with Peter Gould for thirty years. His approach to acting and Shakespeare is, like Gould's, very physical.

Stephen Stearns's workshop is titled: Suit the Word to the Action, the Action to the Word
Shakespeare's words are actions. Characters use them as weapons to get what they want: to convince others, to argue with and convince themselves. In this workshop, students will wield words like weapons in several Shakespeare speeches to discover who wins, who loses and to learn how to suit their physical actions to the words.

Heidi Fagan is a professional director and theater instructor, specializing in Youth Theater and Shakespeare. She founded the Northern Stage Education Program in White River Jct., VT and continues to teach there. She holds both a BA and a MFA in Theater Directing and continued her acting and teaching training at Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox, MA. Heidi periodically directs Shakespeare in the Park for the Vermont Theater Co. and runs River Theater, a youth theater company in Charlestown, NH.

Heidi's workshop is titled: O For A Muse of Fire!
How do you create a battlefield, horses, soldiers and campfires using only your body and voice? Enter the world of Henry V and find out how to bring passion, creativity and ensemble acting to the Chorus of this dynamic play. Find out what the words mean, why they move us and how we can in turn let them resonate to the audience.

James Spruill has, for many years, been an Associate Professor of Theatre in the Boston University School of Theatre. He is the co-founder of New African Company, a community based Boston theatre. He has directed professional theatre productions around the Boston area for thirty-five years and has appeared in both television and film. He can currently be seen in feature films "Head Space", "Turntable" and "Squeeze" on the movie channel. Jim has also toured across the nation with his one-man show, "Frederick Douglas". Jim is the winner of the Stage Source "Theatre Hero" Award for 2007.

His Workshop Entitled: Shakespeare and Prejudice
In this workshop Jim and students will act out and discuss several scenes from Shakespeare, which explore the nature of human prejudice. The focus will be on "Othello" (Emilia and Desdemona) and "The Merchant of Venice" (Shylock, Portia and the Prince of Morocco).

Special Workshop for Teachers: "Performing Shakespeare with Bob Sugarman, author of Performing Shakespeare: Ways to Learn"

Robert Sugarman will offer insights based on his research with a second grade group in Canada, a fifth grade group in Los Angeles that does an annual uncut Shakespearean production, a high school group in Brooklyn that does productions in "Street, Spanish and Shakespeare," and the programs conducted by Shakespeare & Co. in Massachusetts. Participants will be asked to share their experiences working with young people with Shakespeare. Bring ideas for staging the final Mechanicals scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hopefully, together we will generate useful ideas for going forward with this work while defining its value so that we can communicate it to others.