Photo by Cynthya Porter
Jamie Benter, Vicky Hoff, and Chelsea Boettcher read lines from "The Comedy of Errors" during Riverway Learning Community's summer program in preparation to attend Thursday's production. |
A group of students from Riverway Learning Community capped off their own summer Shakespeare program Thursday by Chilling With Will and seeing people act out the story they’d been immersed in for weeks leading up to the show.
The students just finished reading The Comedy of Errors, being performed this season by the Great River Shakespeare Festival. The reading was part of a summer program led by project coordinator Jamie Harper, who admits he himself was a bit intimidated by Shakespeare in the beginning.
Four years ago Harper offered students the chance to see a GRSF play and delve deeper into the meaning of Shakespeare, though in the beginning neither he nor the students knew quite what to expect.
But the magic of Shakespeare has its way with people, and once the students and Harper had read one play and seen it performed they had to go back for more.
“It’s really kind of fun because we learn together,” Harper said. “They think of things I didn’t think of.”
The point of the program, Harper said, was to discover some meaning behind why a town the size of Winona would take on a Shakespeare festival, and why was the world, including Winona, so enamored with plays 400 years old?
What the students find each year, Harper said, is a timelessness to Shakespeare that feels familiar even to a 21st century teenager. “They read it and they find things in there that they relate to. They get it.”
Reading the plays before seeing them performed is a way to help students gain a better understanding of the performance before they go. For many, Shakespeare is new, and Harper spends several weeks with them analyzing the story, the characters and the meaning behind them.
For fun, Harper devises games and skits that students must do that relate in some way to the play, and together it all gives them a greater appreciation when they see the characters they’ve come to know come to life on the stage at GRSF.
Harper started with six students the first year of his program. Thursday night he brought ten students plus five former students to Chill With Will, a special GRSF performance event aimed at teens coming to see one of the plays.
Aside from reading The Comedy of Errors, Harper’s students this year had a deeper connection to the festival because they were called upon to help in the festival’s time of need and they answered the call. With most GRSF company members not yet in Winona, Riverway students helped the festival relocate supplies and materials to its new costume shop. Once the costume shop was set up, the students were invited back for a look at the inner workings of the festival.
Seeing it all woven together Thursday night was as amazing as Harper could have ever hoped it would be. “It blew us all away,” he said. “It was neat for the students to see that text come alive.”
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