Elm Shakespeare Company
Players Camp, Summer 2025
The Rude Mechanicals
A nine days wonder!
The shortest version of players camp ever (due to the July 4th holiday) put on a production of the rude mechanicals' arc in Midsummer Night's Dream with students from ages 7-13.
Favorite moments include:
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The fairies deciding to build themselves animal ears, to explain Titania's interest in the transformed Nick Bottom the Weaver (since the love juice plot is absent in our version, the actress playing Titania decided to fashion her own donkey ears to "match")
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The mechanicals costumed as a Scout Troupe (a "crew of patches", as Hobgoblin calls them) who all designed their characters patches
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A joke created on a rainy interlude in the park where Peter Quince is forced to repeatedly correct the pronunciation of "Pyramus" that drifts as far away as "Perry the Platypus?"
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Students working together in groups to build a series of short vignettes, in character, as the mechanicals and fairies both set off into the magical woods (eventually set to music to serve as a transition)
Henry IV, Part I
Teen Troupe, Fall 2024
2024 Elm Shakespeare Youth Festival
"Where have you been all day, Henry me son?"
In Fall of 2024, I was brought in as a co-director with Benjamin Curns. Every Saturday, high schoolers came together to bring life to one of the great and wild history plays of Shakespeare -- the story of the Prince of Wales (made so by his father's civil war) and his friendship with Falstaff (a drunken but charming cheat of a knight). A tale of growing up and betrayed friendships, long before Prince Hal became the Henry V who conquered in teh Battle of Agincourt.
Favorite moments include:
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The scene between Hotspur and his wife Kate Percy will always be dear to me, and these two actors worked hard to build up the trust with one another to make the complicated marriage dynamic work onstage. The look she gave him when he tried to put her on a pedestal, in particular, sticks in my brain.
- The slow-motion Gad's Hill Robbery "fight"was a showstopper at every performance, but I also appreciated the fire that Mistress Quickly brought to her chase of Falstaff that somehow had all the ferocity of the Act 5 battle sequence!
- The Festival crowd fell the most in love with Falstaff and *spoiler* were decidedly not okay with Falstaff's apparent death in the midst of a fight with The Douglas. Their profound distress at the loss of Falstaff and of Hal's reaction to his best friend's death were topped only by the crowd's jubilation (to their feet, shouting down the lines, stopping the show!) when he sprang up, back from 'the dead', and revealed that he had just been faking. This little known play is so often performed for Shakespeare experts who know the whole time. I had forgotten what a surprise it must have been on the original Globe stage! *spoiler*
Teen Troupe Summer 2024
Midsummer Night's Dream
"The course of true love never did run smooth..."
Lysander is good enough to warn us about "true love" right from the start of Shakespeare's comedy, and our version certainly delivered the chaos and strife that gets in the way of the lost stories in Midsummer. Directed with Jahsiah Mussig over five weeks in the summer heat in Edgerton Park.
Favorite moments include:
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Titania's famous speech about how the quarrel between her, the Queen of the Fairies, and her king Oberon has destroyed the natural world was brought to life by the whole company, bringing together their vocal class's devised works into the final production
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One of my favorite things to see in any production is an actor who often has the joy of being the star of a given scene work just as hard to support a moment that belongs to another character/performer -- our dukes, kings, fairies, and lead players continually pushed one another forward to take the joke or the spotlight - Oberon and Puck even made themselves truly "invisible" (offstage) during the Lovers' Fight to avoid pulling the slightest focus from the triumph of their fellows.
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The friendship between Robin Starveling (playing Moonshine) and Snug the Joiner (playing the Lion) was a particularly charming echo of the students's real-world friendship, full of mutual support, line, learning, and encouragement.
