Lord What Fools These Mortals Be!
What is it that makes an eight-year-old kid decide she wants to be in a Shakespeare play? Does she wake up with this idea one day and comb the internet for possibilities for realizing this ambition? More likely she has a friend who is in a play and asks her to come and see it. She sits in the audience in the front row on a tiny chair and she is so close to the actors she can touch them. They look right in her eyes when they talk and, though she may not understand all the words they are saying, they are having so much fun up there on the stage that their joy bubbles over onto the audience and she knows she just has to be one of them.
This is the reality when a child comes to see the plays put on by The Childrenʼs Shakespeare Theatre. We hear it time and again from the new children who join us every year. The children who are lucky enough to discover that Shakespeare is fun, long before they study it at school and have to hear the groans of other kids who donʼt understand the words on the page and therefore donʼt have any fun with Shakespeare. To bask in the beautiful words of these great classics at a young age is a great gift. It is a gift that keeps on giving as company members who go on to study Shakespeare in high school can attest. They find that papers and tests come very easily after they have experienced the words out loud and in action. High school students in CST report very high scores on the Literature SAT and the stories of the plays even serve them in history classes.
What does this all mean to you, the audience? It means you should bring your children and grandchildren to our upcoming production of A Midwinter Night’s Dream and see if they might enjoy this delightful live theater right here in your own backyard. You just might be opening a door for them that will allow them to see the world in a whole new way. Not that the kids in CST all want to be actors when they grow up. Far from it! Most of them are just having a blast meeting new friends and working on a project with a wonderful community of people. They are learning to speak and to listen. They are learning to cooperate and to make choices. They are learning to trust others and rely on them to create a final “product” they can all be proud of. It is team-building at its best. These skills will serve them as they go on to become architects, doctors and CEOs or whatever their hearts tell them they must pursue. They will have strengthened their confidence to follow their dreams.
The Childrenʼs Shakespeare Theatre will present its final production for 2009, A Midwinter Night’s Dream, on December 4 & 5 at 7:00 pm and December 6 & 12 at 4:00 pm. It will be a wintry re-telling of this beloved classic, set in the 1920s with flapper fairies and slapstick comedy. Join us as the season of lights begins and celebrate a childʼs imagination and joy. This show includes a cast of 26 children from ages 5 to 14, many of them from Palisades and a fair number of them new to CST. Bring a child to share in this delightful production.