Life has been pushing forward the past weeks at a breakneck pace. I last wrote from Lincoln and since spent a week in Michigan, a night in New York City, and arrived Sunday afternoon in Staunton, Virginia. Yesterday was the first real day of NEH Shakespeare program and the day really confirmed that this is the right place for me to be right now, the right place for me to spend my summer.
I had been excited about the program since I decided to apply in December, but still maintained my reservations. Its not easy for a teacher to volunteer five weeks of the summer to spend buried in their work, but in this case, I can’t imagine a more satisfying way to spend these summer weeks. This whole town lives and breathes Shakespeare. Its love affair with his theater, and the history of that theater, is intoxicating. I already feel so deeply inspired, so ready to dive even deeper into the material I love so much, to look at more deeply from new perspectives.
A final project for the program will be our collective performance of Shakespeare’s classical ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. Our total group has been divided into several smaller groups, each responsible for an eighth of the play. In our time here we are responsible for preparing our scene, which we’ll be performing on the final day of the project. What’s most exciting about this, though, is that we are exploring the original practices and conditions for how Shakespeare’s company originally performed those plays some four hundred years ago, and learning from those practices how to better read, perform, and experience Shakespeare.
I plan to write regularly while here, keeping a log of these experiences, so check back here often. I’ll fill you in our progress as we work!
Till then, peace out everybody! Happy Tuesday!
