Shakespeare...Declassified

I'm about to share about something rare, personal, unusual, hopeful and presently at risk of fading into "the stuff that dreams are made on."

Well...not if I can help it.

If you are not in a theatre company, this is just a story. If you are or have been in a theatre company, you know literally and figuratively…it's Life. and like Life, "The Show Must Go On." And if All the World’s a Stage we citizens of earth have just lived through a tragedy...God knows, we need the arts to give us hope, relief, inspiration and courage to march into a Brave New World. But first...let's go back a few years. To a happier time.

Here's how the Country's Youngest Shakespeare troupe began...

Or how it began before it began. The seed.

See, my young brain couldn't figure out human nature, let alone my own nature! At age 10, I couldn't understand why people fight each other. It seemed like everyone stepped on each other's toes. At best, it was a struggle to "get along." I would try to make sense of the evening news - I'd ask Mom why is everyone exploding or angry or killing each other on the evening news!? She said,

"There are many...icky people in the world."

Icky People. Got it. I had heard my parents mention the mistake of "marrying out of one's class." I wondered why? And who "classified" us? Everyone in boxes, categories, labeled by generation, by caste, like serfs and lords, untouchables, or given diagnoses, moved into and out of neighborhoods based on race. Classified! Aren't we just all humans walking around on a rock in space? Complicated, messy, sticky, frustating, cruel, contradictory, imperfect, kind, selfish, generous, humans. But why are we like this?! And where do I fit in?

Then I discovered Shakespeare.

I was 12 when I read Macbeth. Oddly....I related. It was a perfect roadmap to my shadow side!

Lady Macbeth went against her conscience and stopped sleeping. For good! I had been stealing candy bars from Ralphs on La Brea and I had stopped sleeping. Via Lady M's journey, I connected my 12 year old guilty conscience...to sleeplessness...to madness. I saw my future! I didn't want to die of madness!

So I stopped stealing candy.

Next I attempted Hamlet. I looked up a lot of words, but started to see the picture soon enough. Another road map - this one was for how to navigate other people in my life. At 13, I was intimidated into keeping the secrets of adults, just like Hamlet. I loathed my uncle, just like Hamlet. And just like Hamlet's uncle, my uncle did bad things while enjoying a much revered public persona. My uncle was loved by the community, the president of Security Pacific Bank. My Uncle was Claudius. Shakespeare helped me connect those dots. Thanks, Hamlet. I stopped protecting his secrets and told my mom who he really was. One of those "icky people." I began to understand the best and worst of human nature through the characters of Shakespeare.

When it comes to jealousy, rage, loss, betrayal, power, friendship, madness, death and love - no one has their finger on the pulse of these equalizers more than the Bard. He's the supreme de-classifier.

It's understandable why quite unintenitonally I would start a Shakespeeare troupe with the youngest humans possible.

THE MOMENT IT STARTED

Back in the early 2000's, my neighbor and I tried an experiment on 0ur 5 year olds. If we gave Lily and Lola lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream, would they understand them? (Lola's mom had been in the Royal Shakespeare Company; myself, a professional lifelong actor.)

"Weaving spiders, come not here! Hence you long legged spinners hence!"

They instantly acted out the spider weaving a web. Once we told them what "hence" meant, Lily barked it with passion at Lola (pretending to be the spider) who quickly crawled outta Dodge! Well, that wasn't hard! How about the next one?

"Beatles black, approach not near! Worm nor snail do no offence!"

"Ohhh, the fairies are trying to scare away the bugs from their queen while she sleeps! Ohhh, because they're tiny!"

They wanted more!

"You spotted snakes with double tongue! Thorny hedgehogs be not seen! Newts and blindworms do no wrong! Come not near our Fairy Queen!"

Barbie dolls be damned. Give 'em lines from Shakespeare! This moment of realization exploded into something unexpected and unstoppable.. The Los Angeles Drama Club (now Shakespeare Youth Festival)

Lily and Lola acted out their lines daily but they needed more fairies so we invited the whole dang neighborhood over! Soon we were a troupe of pint size Shakespereans, ages 5-7, putting on The Tempest. Our Prospero turned 8 during our 9 month rehearsal process and that seemed horribly ancient.

It all was unfathomable. And yet it happened.

Our credo became: Bite off more than you can chew...and chew it.

I think the education system has it backwards. They've ruined Shakespeare for many people. To really know Shakespeare, you have to act it, tear it up, bite into it! Get off the chairs. Embody it! Get on your feet and speak the speech, as Hamlet says. You must be a Player.

The play's the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.

Fifteen years of this work now and the Shakespeare Youth Festival Players grow more confident, compassionate, wise, joyful and sharp while year after year - they take on Shakespeare characters like superpowers!

Whenever the kids run smack into themselves in a Shakespeare play - they find a deep connection. A lifelong friend. They feel seen, heart, got and they might even find acceptance of their shadow sides - something that took me decades to gain. These kids find themselves the way I did, just by reading Macbeth.

I see it with every show - they light up - and I get to watch it as I stand in the wings, wiping a tear, shaking my head...

Year in, year out, they come back for more to rehearse and perform full productions of Shakespeare in a professional theatre setting - not a church or school auditorium, but a real theatre. Each child gets the unique experience of being a true actor. And by this process, they transform into true actors, from the heart and with all their hearts.

Our troupes (ages 5-18) have performed all but 5 plays in the Canon multiple times, discovering unique viewpoints and perspectives (not just with the hits, but forgotten plays like Timon of Athens or King John). We have experimented and it has paid off. We turned Taming of The Shrew on its head by having the Shrew be male and the rogue suitor female. The "submission speech" takes on a whole different tone when genders are swapped.

A Winter's Tale featured LGBTQ teen couples - at the request of our older students. We've done Romeo and Juliet, starting with the final image in the play and working backward....we've done Titus Andronicus, the Musical for heaven's sake! No young people in this massive city know Shakespeare like our Players. So much so that when they finally get it in school, they're teaching the teachers.

In 2014 PBS came to interview us. One of their questions was,

"Do you see this thing you started becoming global?

I was stopped in my tracks. I said yes, but the idea seemed impossible.

Global!? How would that ever happen....?

SHAKESPEARE IN BOTSWANA

Botswana is far. A remote country in Southern Africa with more elephants than people - where the army has been re-purposed to only shoot poachers. There was a house I was invited stay in while I volunteered at the rural Motopi Village school...somehwere in the Kalahari, I'm told.

I was able to pull together $1100 for my ticket. I packed misquito repellant and some kid's clothes and Shakespeare books and got on a plane while my partner Julia finished running our Shakespeare Festival stateside.

In two days, I was in the village, living in a house owned by a woman named Chicken and teaching every day in a rural school. My first day, I was presented to the tribal leader (their term). He looked over at me as a loud fan hummed and blew hot, dusty air on us. After what felt like a minute he said, "Few from the industrialized world come to the Village. If they come, they go back that day. No one stays here. But you. God will bless you."

With the sanction of the chief, I went to work - visiting each classroom and greeting the children with the little amount of Setswana I learned on the plane: they would laugh, my attempts were comical! And yet I must learn from them. And they from me. By the end of the week, they were on their feet speaking lines from The Tempest!

I taught by day, and faced my fear of weaving spiders at night! Hence you long legged spinners, hence! No really. Hence.

Performing for the Village brought everyone together in a celebration of the arts from different cultures. And what I thought would be one trip to Africa in 2018....turned into a return trip to the Village in 2019! They were now my extended family in Botswana, which led to interest from another country. And a huge endeavor to come.

SHAKESPEARE IN KENYA

An invitation came to go to Kenya for a 10 day overnight camp intensive with 139 kids in Kogelo (eastern Kenya). This was at the behest Auma Obama, President Obama's sister. How daunting. I would have to call in the troups. I did and they all said yes. We have no big corporate sponsor or giant donor, so we turned to family and friends to help support the venture. My partner Julia and three more teaching artists and four teens would each raise funds to make this happen. They did not disappoint!

Once we arrived in Nairobi, our task was to figure out how to drive 12 hours to the other side of the country (a story in itself). Once in the village of Kogelo (made famous as the birthplace of Barack Obama's father), we would meet the children and start to rehearse for a show. But as show with all 139 children...in 9 days time.

Camping in Africa with 139 kids with the wonderful team at Sauti Kuu was a once in a lifetime experience. We were summoned there to do what we do best: get the kids to learn new skills, tell stories and perform Shakespeare. They did it in three languages in just over a week!

But before rehearsals, a student-led athletic marathon happened each day. We rose at 5:45am in darkness and began running around the track, then broke into groups for Basketball, Boxing, Soccer, Yoga… I was honored to lead the closing meditation and savasana.

After a communal breakfast of Mengazi, hard boiled eggs, watermelon,and lemon grass tea, we broke into rotating groups of 15 campers each - exposing them to stage combat, sword fighting, story theater, western dance, movement styles, improv, team building games, and the story of Hamlet.

"Shake Speare” - I would have them hold up a spear and shake it to remember the name. "He was the son of a glovemaker from a village like this one! His life was closer to your life, than it was to mine." Indeed.

After the day's work, we ate dinner and we were taught about ten new dances - all led by the Sauti Kuu kids.

Auma Obama stepped in with some creative exercises of her own! One evening she had them run their lines in groups of two while we surrounded them, trying to distract them. They had to hyper-focus on their lines. It worked. I think she too was bit by the acting bug!

The day of the show, the rain suddenly stopped and the Village of Kogelo gathered before us. We began our massive show. The performances were stunning. I was so impressed by them all! This show literally blew the roof off - if there was a roof - but like in Shakespeare's day, our Players performed under wide approving skies !

The Sauti Kuu children made history - performing excerpts from Shakespeare in three languages: English, Luo and Swahili - also incorporating dance, song and their personal interpretations of To Be Or Not To Be!

We left forever transformed. Thanks to the bonds created there from doing something nearly impossible, we have all stayed in touch and are always looking for an opening to go back and do it all over again.

We returned to L.A. to put on our own Festival. Opening week, Covid hit the world, and we all were totally pummeled. Not only were the shows cancelled abruptly with lockdown, (some never getting to open), but 2020/2021 would present a huge threat to our survival.

Gathering together live, and making close physical, intellectual and emotional contact is the antithesis of physical/social distancing. Unless you know the importance of this kind of connecting, you wouldn't consider it essential. Well it is. Look up the suicide rate in teens for 2020/2021. We are hurting and we still are not out of the woods from this blow.

SHAKESPEARE IN GUANAJUATO

April 23, 2021. Shakespeare’s 457th Birthday. I have been invited to Mexico. The state? Guanajuato. The city? San Miguel de Allende. I socked away $300 for a flight to Leon, Mexico and was blown away when a bilingual school had asked me back - and after being under quarantine for months, the teens were going to gather live for this workshop!

When their teacher, Elsanne reached out to her students about gathering live for a random Shakespeare workshop, 99.9% came on board. They knew they weren’t just called out of their homes to passively listen (though what’s passive about listening to Hamlet?) They knew that at one point, they would be actively participating…but to the degree of playing…the Ghost…in Spanish? Who could have imagined? Me.

Here in Mexico, as in Kenya and Botswana, there is resonance with plays like Hamlet, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar. In fact, one of our teen players in Kenya changed his name from Philemon to Phil-Hamlet.

I walk a mile up hilly cobblestoned roads to meet 8th & 9th Graders. For the first time in a year, these brave tweens will emerge from their casas to gather in the patio of the school! What could have motivated such a bold move?

Hamlet. So today, on the Bard’s 457th birthday (and 405th death day) these 8th and 9th Graders gathered in the patio to take on the unknown. With Covid still going, they must emote behind masks. After some ice-breaker games, movement, breathing, articulation, and emotional exercises, we circle up to hear the story of Hamlet.

As expected, the Players were swept up in the plight, plot and outcome of what is one of the most performed plays in the western world. The Ghost would be played by the entire class in Spanish (Guttenberg translation of Hamlet), while Hamlet would be played by one actor in the center of the Circle, responding to the Ghost, but in English.

This entire event was a risk — coming from a year of social isolation, the teens are expected to jump off a cliff by attempting something new, hard, weird, and unfamiliar. After the story, I ask them to get up on their feet and take on the lines and the intention of Hamlet’s Father. No small feat. This guy is burning up in purgatory, having been killed with his “sins on his head.” Poisoned by his brother who steals his wife and his crown — the King wants revenge from the grave. Would he be justified?

We talk about ourselves and the wrongs done to us. The wrongs we have done. We talk about revenge. What do we do when it feels justified? We share our own stories and we search for a personal connection to this random Ghost inside a play from 400+ years ago. We find it - the same way I found it at 11 in Lady Macbeth and her battered consience.

On the day of the demonstration, we all return to the back patio. Some have lost their scripts. There were twins, powerful actors, who realize they have a sudden exam and must leave. Add to the chaos, my jet-lagged errors in assigning lines the week before. We quickly must reassign, regroup, rehearse. The players have to start nearly from scratch, taking on new lines in Spanish. We have one hour to put this together and film it.

Welcome to the theatre.

Because of health guidlines, we do not summon an audience. Instead we plan to film the performance. Elsanne brings twenty hand-crafted head peices and masks which instantly inspire the Players.As theatre can go, just as we nail the line re-assignments of the Ghost…get the head-dresses on, take that big inhale before we begin— sudden BLASTS of jack hammers explode next door! Construction is happening all around this city and even Shakespeare is not immune.

El espectáculo debe continuar! Elsanne runs out to find the workers and negotiate a construction moratorium for twenty minutes. She returns with the news and so we circle around Hamlet and under a hot sun, behind masks, over the shrieking of birds, with brand new lines in Shakespeare- in Spanish — we begin! Masks and costruction workers. What better way to break into Shakespeare? They would have to project their voices or fail.

The Players nailed it! It was bilingual and dramatic and creepy and exciting! They surprised themselves! We all took our bows and departed and off I went into the cobblestoned streets with the reassurance of hope for the future.

Teacher Elsanne sent me their thoughtful reflections on the process. So many deep thinkers in this group. I was really moved. (I posted a sample, the reflections of Lucas Carnalla's notes below.)

As I said, we are at risk right now. Before Covid hit, we thrived with two passionate directors at the helm, a few dedicated teaching artists, and a plucky group of volunteers who have done everything from sewing trim on costumes, to baking lemon bars for our concession stands, to planning gala celebrations. But we are at a crossroads.

We need the support of commited donors and patrons who understand the powerful effect the Arts can have on young lives, and who are willing to help us build an infrastructure that will enable us to give the Shakespeare Youth Festival global and local experience to many children as possible.

With funding for the arts in LA Public schools having plummeted, children need outside programs like this one more than ever.  According to a recent LA Times survey, 8 out of every 10 elementary schools don't have the Arts programs needed to meet state requirements. Participation in the Arts bolsters student achievement and contributes to stronger participation in school activities.

Low-income students who participated in arts-rich programs had better grades and higher rates of college enrollment and graduation than those who had little or no involvement. There is a critical need to fill the gap in our children’s lives with alternative access to the Arts.

Shakespeare Youth fills that gap. It is a joy and a privilege to bring the magic of theater to our young Players, and I would love to share that privilege with the world.

So if you believe this is a meaningful program run by passionate people, you'd be right. And if you are the type to act on your beliefs, I am right here...waiting for you in the wings.

Lucas Carnalla's reflections on the Mexico workshop:

“At first when I got the email from my English teacher saying we had to go to the school for some Shakespeare demonstration, I was pretty anguished. I thought it would be a pretty lame experience, but I was wrong. I enjoyed it.

Ms Blaire explained that we were going to listen to the play of “Hamlet.” This is what I came here for. The way she described the characters and deaths was funny and very understandable. I basically had just seen a whole theatre play made short by one theater lady! It was cool to hear her interpretation of the story, and the way she described it all.

After Blaire finished the story, she gave us all a three paged script, and a few lines to memorize. We read a bit of them out loud, and then we went home. I was eager to return the next Friday. While I waited for that day, I read my lines out loud and memorized them.

Finally, it was the second and last day of “Hamlet”. We all did the exercises we attempted on day one, (Now with a lot more enthusiasm), and we were basically ready. Once we were all ready, we did the small play. I somehow was able to say my line without messing anything up, and when it was all over, we had to spin to the opposite side of Hamlet. It must have looked cool when we all talked and turned in unison and I was able to pull it off.

The experience was very enlightening. Not only on the story of the play, but in theatre in General. I learned a lot about theatre in those two days then I had actually done theatre at nine years old! Pretty crazy, right? Blaire Baron was a very nice person and she really helped me understand theatre and what it is like to do Shakespeare in front of an audience. It was a very difficult (and sweaty) process, but we were able to do it in two days. I would certainly like to do it again someday, but maybe in a theatre and not in the hot sun next time. Good experience and I would Definitely go again!”

Had I more time…I’d like more….I’d like to go deeper.

"I'd like more."

Shakespeare Youth Festival’s mission is to ignite a spark in young people. Our job is done if only we get them to want more: out of the work, out of the arts, out of life, and mostly out of themselves.