|
|
-
Brush up your Shakespeare
ISU Theatre students participate for first time in international
festival.
- This must have truly been a chance of a lifetime.
After all, one Iowa State theatre student postponed graduation for an entire
semester so that he could participate. Another student put off looking for
a job to travel to Scotland, while a third headed overseas just days after
graduating.
"To say that the final thing we got to do as students is this world-wide
festival is pretty special," said Scott Morehead, the student who delayed
graduating. "You say the name Edinburgh Festival and everyone in theatre
knows about it."
Morehead, along with fellow performing arts majors Kevin Geiken and Melanie
Snow, traveled to the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland this past August. The
three represented the entire cast of ISU Theatre's production of "The
Complete Works of William Shakespeare - 'Abridged.'"
The Edinburgh Festival, whose origins began after the end of World War II,
is the world's largest performing arts festival.
The trio gave five performances during the festival. Geiken described the
production as "a performance of all 37 of Shakespeare's plays in one
night."
Actually Geiken, Morehead and Snow presented "The Complete Works of
William Shakespeare - 'Abridged'" in just one hour.
"Every Shakespearean work is mentioned," said Robin Stone, former
assistant professor in ISU Theatre, who traveled to Scotland with the students
as the play's director.
"'Hamlet' and 'Romeo and Juliet' are given a lot more time than some
of the other plays however. You take the whole play and boil it down to
say 10-15 minutes. The actors say the famous lines and move on."
"Othello" is rapped. "Julius Caesar" takes maybe 10
seconds. There were no sets. All the props and costumes of the three fit
into one suitcase.
"It's fast and furious," Geiken said. "We switch costumes
and props quickly. But the audience can see which characters we're playing
through the lines and gestures."
Despite the parodic nature of the production, the three ISU Theatre actors
knew they had to be accurate wherever they performed the show.
"You can't screw up the famous Shakespearean lines," Morehead
said.
The three performers were chosen for the Scotland trip after being part
of a larger cast of a production during the 2004 summer session.
"There was a huge difference between this show and the show last summer,"
Morehead said. "We had nine actors last year. There were no breathers
this year."
After the success of the 2004 version of "The Complete Works of William
Shakespeare," ISU Theatre faculty members decided to help fund the
program's first trip to the Edinburgh Festival. Donations by faculty members
helped pay for the students' flights to Scotland.
Geiken, Morehead and Snow were chosen because of their talent and their
"enormous contributions to the department" according to Jane Cox,
director of ISU Theatre.
"We feel it is important for students in theatre to have an international
experience," she said. "The Edinburgh Festival is one of the great
gatherings of performers from all over the world."
"We all hope to stay involved with theatre now that we've graduated,
and this was a great opportunity for us to make connections and understand
our craft even more," Geiken said.
Melanie Snow, Kevin Geiken and Scott Morehead
Around LAS
August 22 to September 4, 2005
|
|
