One of my favorite memories of summer: standing in line with friends at New York's Central Park, waiting for free Shakespeare tickets. It was hot, but companionable. The reward was coming back later in the evening for top-notch Shakespeare under the stars, produced by the Public Theater.
I saw Patrick Stewart dancing the conga as Prospero in a Caribbean-infused The Tempest. Christopher Walken played Iago to Raoul Julia's Othello (a review of that production is here).
My husband and I moved to central Maryland twelve years ago. In those years, a local Shakespeare troupe started up. We started taking the kids to Chesapeake Shakespeare Company's productions when my daughter was about six and my son was nine. We'd read a picture book version of the play, pack some snacks, and we were good to go. The kids followed the action just fine, thanks to fabulous acting.
CSC's summer home is the ruins of a Victorian girls' finishing school, The Patapsco Female Institute. There's no roof -- just add a stage and voila, Shakespeare under the stars. Going every summer is a family tradition. (You can read a piece I wrote about how much fun we have at CSC here.)
A few years back, my daughter started doing camp with Chesapeake Shakespeare performers. It's one thing to be a drama kid -- Shakespeare theater kids are her people.
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| Miss J (left) and a camp-mate show off their stage-fighting skills. |
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| Performing a monologue as Viola from Twelfth Night. |
This summer, CSC's two plays are Romeo and Juliet and Pride and Prejudice. Be still my romantic heart! It's opening night for R&J tonight. I can't make it, but I'll be there -- picnic and bug spray in hand -- with the family on Sunday. (All Sunday performances are family-friendly. Kids 19 and under are free with a paying adult at *every* performance.)
My friend Jenny Leopold is directing Romeo and Juliet. I can't wait to see her poetry-focused interpretation, which includes elements of slam-style performance. The Queen Mab speech as a slam poem? Can't. Wait.
Sunday evening's performance opens with a Youth Spoken Word Festival. Three young performers will strut their verbal stuff before the show.
Back when I still lived in the New York suburbs, I taught ninth grade English. Romeo and Juliet was part of our curriculum. Every year, my students memorized the play's prologue, a sonnet that outlines the story to come. The poem is stuck is indelibly stuck in my brain.
Prologue (Romeo and Juliet)
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
That delicious dish, Jama Rattigan, is our Poetry Friday host today. I'm sure she's cooked up some wonderful early-summer treats for all of us.
