Shakespeare Lives, Thanks to Orcas High Schoolers

– by Margie Doyle —

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The fanciful, fantastic tribute to Love in “A MidSummer Night’s Dream” by William Shakespeare will highlight this week’s Shakespeare Festival, thanks to some 18 inspired high school students, and to adult actors, costumers, teachers, stage producers, musicians and others who have prepared a rich treat for the eyes and ears.

Jake Perrine, truly a Renaissance man in this production, as he teaches, directs, engineers, encourages and acts, has gone deep, sacrificing body, soul and sleep to make the play within a play, a gift to students young and old of Shakespeare and his theme, “Love Conquers All.” “I’m giving all I can,” he says.

The action of “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” originally set in a Greek woods, has been ‘fully modernized,” says Perrine. There are Aliens instead of Fairies, cell phone texts, Siri and Skype are used, one of the heroes is transgender, the “Manager of Mirth” is a wedding Planner, “Love Stinks” by J. Giles is the opening number… but wait! there’s more!

An adult cast of five augments the student cast of 18; Perrine says at least half of those students have never been on stage before. They have worked four days a week since November and “it is a testament to Shakespeare’s writing and understanding of the human condition that [the play] still reads as freshly as it ever did.”

It is also a testament to Perrine’s teaching approach: the students rehearse four days a week for five hours total, and earn English credit, with Val Hellar co-teaching the year-long “Theater as Literature” class.

The text is “all Shakespeare” with some cuts to the 1590s play. The students learned their lines by an intensive exploration into meaning: first, reading Shakespeare’s lines; then paraphrasing the Elizabethan diction in their own words, with their own emotional spin. Finally they incorporate that “phrasing music” with Shakespeare’s original words back in.

Perrine praises the kids, from Freshmen to Seniors, who put in a lot of extra time. He confesses to being surprised at their level of commitment: “The vast majority of them were so into it; and those who were more shy at first have made great strides.”

Perrine is handling almost all the technical aspects of the production — projection, sounds and lighting, and he has overwhelming praise for Kim Secunda and Cara Russell who have created and found the costumes.

He’s found challenges in the the tiny amount of time to rehearse — for seven months with only a “chunk of an hour at a time. The rehearsal schedule has been very segmented and spread out,’ hampering the consistency needed to build up momentum. The high school schedule too is subject to “random changes and cancellations,” but Perrine says he’s learned to just work with who is at any given rehearsal.

“The performance is secondary to the journey of exploring, through trying on someone else’s foibles. [Theater] is a great tool for empathy and compassion. The kids are all on the same team even though they’re from radically different cliques.

“As director and participants, we all should come to some agreement about the play, some central matrix. We agreed the central theme is “Love is the highest power,”

Whether the students portray the King and Queen or Mechanicals and animals, the theme of love as the umbrella over all powers the performance. The gods and fairy-folk are fascinated by mortals because they care about them, says Perrine.

“There are so many levels within this show. Youthful love, that changes at the drop of a hat — or because of a magic spell. Meanwhile the King and Queen are at war over some trifle. All kinds of different relationships are there.

The Shakespeare class is in the second year of its two-year collaborative experiment. Perrine says “Val Hellar is paid by the school district, Orcas Center donates the space, and Orcas Island Education Foundation (OIEF) picks up my tab as a teacher.

“This has been an epic journey for the kids to go back, and back time and again, to the text and find new meanings, new jokes, the great unfolding of a masterful dramatist. It’s truly magical and special.

The play will show Friday and Saturday nights, April 1 and 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the Orcas Center and there will be a “students-only” performance on Thursday night.