Program features performance, workshops

Tragedy, treachery, guilt, loyalty, betrayal and unrequited love took center stage at Kalispell Middle School on Dec. 2 with a performance of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

The performance was done by professional actors from around the country through Montana Shakespeare in the Schools, an educational outreach program of Shakespeare in the Parks. The Kalispell stop was one of 50 the cast will make in Montana, Wyoming and Washington.

The performance was followed by a question-and-answer session and workshops, featuring the actors teaching stage combat and dramatic devices such as soliloquy.

However much Shakespeare is read and studied, the troupe believes it was written to be performed.

“By getting to see a live performance that’s really well done they hear the beauty of the language and they see there’s so much more to it than just words on a page,” eighth-grade English teacher Autumn Gottschlich said.

Performance can open up new ideas and interpretations of Shakespeare, according to actor and Shakespeare in the Schools Company Manager Miles Duffey.

“I think a lot of schools around the country read the plays. To get the chance to see it lifted off the page and interpreted by someone else is really enriching to their experience of language, and opens it up in ways for them that they maybe didn’t see before,” Duffey said.

Shakespeare transcends time and age according to Gottschlich, whose students read “Twelfth Night” as part of a Shakespeare unit she does each year.

For the first time this year, Gottschlich offered her students the opportunity to step inside Shakespeare’s world by visiting The Globe Theatre in London in March.

“It’s timeless because the themes are still relevant to everything these kids face today. So, for instance in the play today there were family issues — deeply troubling family issues — there was love, unrequited love with Ophelia and Hamlet, [and] there was the need for revenge,” Gottschlich said.

During the question-and-answer session with the actors, students were asked if any of them had faced an issue like those faced by the characters in the play.

“A whole bunch of hands went up,” Gottschlich said.

In Gottschlich’s classroom, students worked on giving life to Hamlet’s famous “To be, or not to be,” soliloquy by manipulating their voices and bodies.

First it began with a warm up. Actors Stephanie Chavara and Tyler Meredith helped students “stretch” their voices by nearly screeching then lowering their voices to a guttural tone and then lisping with their tongues sticking out.

“But we must also learn how to communicate. Can you see what Tyler and I are doing right now — enunciating,” Chavara said with great emphasis on her words.

Once warmed up, the circle of students delved into the rhetorical device “antithesis” in the phrase “To be, or not to be.”

“If I’m saying to kill or not to kill, what are those,” Meredith asked.

One student answered, “opposites.”

“Yes, absolutely. We also call that antithesis or anti-thesis,” she said.

To practice the idea of opposites the actors had the students each say a word in the famous soliloquy and do the opposite of the previous person in tone and gesture.

Next door to Gottschlich’s classroom, students lined up in pairs and thrust, cut and slashed foam swords at each other while their intended victims ducked and curved back like bananas to avoid the sword.

“What do you say to the angel of death,” actor Brett Garrett asked.

“Not today,” the students shouted.

“En garde,” Garrett said as the students held out their swords and acted out choreographed swordplay sequences.

Eighth-graders in this stage combat workshop were using fencing techniques to simulate combat without causing actual harm between actors.

“Swords are meeting, not hitting hard — sort of agreeing on a place to meet,” said actor Ty Fanning as he demonstrated the technique. “This is sort of part of the communication and working with a scene partner.”

Fanning said perpetrator and victim cue each other through movement and sound.

“The victim is generally in charge of movement in stage combat,” Fanning said.

The combat is an illusion. Fanning said he cues his partner by ducking before the sword swings across his head.

“I’m giving permission by ducking down,” Fanning said.

Garrett added, “The goal is to make it look realistic that you can’t tell I’m swinging after he ducks.”

After going through three sequences and ending in a slash, eighth-graders Tommy Wells and Spencer Bain high-fived each other.

Wells and Bain said what they enjoyed most about the performance of “Hamlet” was the play-within-a-play, the role of power and Shakespeare’s ability to keep the spectator guessing.

“He manipulates words to where you’re always on the edge,” Wells said. “One thing can be taken in multiple different directions in the play and affect the story plot.”

Reporter Hilary Matheson can be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.