Much Ado About...
Jonathan, Jennifer & Spencer!
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH SHAKESPEARE?
Jonathan: A tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme. I read Shakespeare in High School and thought, "Man this is boring!". Then I did the school play and got to get into some rumbles and thought, " Hey this is okay!". Then in University diving into the *SCARE QUOTES* the work *END SCARE QUOTES* I thought, "Wow, there is so much going on, and there are so many restrictions but freedom in those restrictions!". I always liked Shakespeare but it took going to The Globe Theatre in London to cement my feelings. I saw Julius Caesar and watching the cast perform with so much conviction, with such mastery of language and to be able to play with and for the audience was breathtaking. It takes seeing it to truly understand it, and to even begin to like it.
Jennifer: I’m not sure what my first introduction to Shakespeare was, but my High School teachers always strived to be a bit different when it came to teaching the curriculum. One teacher refused to teach the “usual” therefore having us read atypical plays such as A Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew and Henry V instead of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. To this day I still haven’t seen or studied Romeo and Juliet. I know the story, and I’ve been in productions that are similar and based upon it, but have still managed to avoid the original play all together on page, stage and screen. Another teacher from the same high school had us memorize soliloquies from Richard III and docked marks every single time we missed a comma or other punctuation mark; we didn’t have to speak it, we had to write it. This proved impossible for me. I’m not sure if that gave more of an appreciation for Shakespeare or more of a disdain for it, but that same teacher, who was also the crotchety, English Rugby coach with a wiry beard, also performed Shirley Valentine for us in front of the class in a purple mumu. Mr. L ended up being one of the best teachers I’ve ever had.
Spencer: My first memory of Shakespeare was reading A Midsummer Night's Dream in Grade 9 English class, which I remember back then enjoying it but trying really hard to be cool and pretend I didn't think it was hilarious. Which is pretty fitting since my first Shakespeare play was performing A Midsummer Night's Dream in Shakesbow. Weird, fun fact: my favorite play is Hamlet, which is also my writing partners, and we add references to the play in most of the screenplays we write.