The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Young actors share a laugh while particicpating in an acting class as part of the Shakespeare Festival

Summer's the time to play in the park

Shakespeare group brings acting camps, plays to the area

By Steve Enders

The play's title couldn't be more perfect for the setting.

Over the next three weeks, South Bay residents will converge on nearby Memorial Park to watch A Midsummer Night's Dream during the third annual Free Shakespeare in the Park festival.

Starting July 31, the professionally staged Shakespearean comedy will feature a full troupe of actors--whose voices will be made audible through a public address system--and elaborate sets and costumes.

A Midsummer Night's Dream will be performed each Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening through Aug. 16. Performances begin at 7:30 p.m.

Besides the South Bay, Free Shakespeare in the Park is being held in San Francisco, Oakland and San Ramon.

The festival began 16 years ago in San Francisco and San Jose, under the umbrella name of the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. Since then, it has evolved into a Bay Area-wide event, which brings people together from all over to enjoy the plays.

Here, it's called the Silicon Valley Shakespeare Festival, which started in San Jose's St. James Park. According to Charlie McCue, the festival's production director, it was an attempt to get the park cleaned up and to introduce Shakespeare, for free, to people in the South Bay.

The park never really got cleaned up, so the city pulled its funding for the festival, which sent organizers looking for a new home in Silicon Valley.

Members of the Cupertino fine arts committee found the baseless-in-the-South-Bay organization in 1995 and prodded the city to help pay for some of the costs associated with the festival. In the summer of 1995 the troupe performed its first play in Memorial Park--Romeo and Juliet.

McCue remembers that originally, the group wanted to perform on the grounds of the Quinlan Community Center, but that a better, more natural setting needed to be found.

That spot was the Memorial Park amphitheater.

"Memorial Park only holds about 900 people, and the moat was odd," he said. "We went through a lot of hoops and great added expense to cover the moat. It was a stunningly beautiful spot, and for Shakespeare, it was perfect."

"This is our permanent home now," he said.

About 800 people attended the festival's first Cupertino performance, and the numbers have been climbing steadily ever since. William Boynton, the festival's arts and education director, said more than 40,000 people now attend the free shows throughout the Bay Area every summer.

The Cupertino audience has evolved along with the festival, and regular attendees know what to expect at a performance.

"I've got three words of advice: Get there early, bring something to eat and drink and bring a blanket or a coat," said Cupertino city clerk Kimberly Smith.

Smith also acts as a liaison to the city's fine arts commission. She said that the city has given $5,000 this year to help the festival, which she called a "full stage, high-quality production."

About 100 kids from Sunnyvale and other West Valley cities are in the festival's Shakespeare camp at De Anza College, where they're learning the ropes of acting, Shakespearean style. Next Friday, they'll perform two plays on one of the area's most well-known stages inside the Flint Center.

"We started the [summer] camps to widen our audience and to get kids into it," Boynton said. "Now they're bringing their parents to it."

The camps, which have been running most of the summer in various communities around the Bay Area, give kids the opportunity to take part in Shakespeare as well.

Boyton said that although many kids see Shakespeare's work as a "stiff, archaic language that's tough to understand," most can understand it when they're allowed to act out the parts.

"We're not trying to replace the schools," Boynton said. "But we have a talent pool here. We're passing the torch to a new generation of theater-goers."

The second camp at De Anza College began this week. Here, kids age 8-13 and 14-18 will learn the language of Shakespeare. They'll also learn the history and time period of his work, how to use voice and movement to create their characters and the basics of production and design. They even get to design and create their own costumes and sets.

Next Friday, they'll perform at the Flint Center. Since the De Anza camps have so many kids, two plays will be performed, according to instructor Katie Kasben.

Kasben, also a professional actress, said that the De Anza camp is her favorite because she and her students get to use the Flint Center, where "the acoustics are amazing."

"Shakespeare's not easy," she said. "Some focus on the words, but sometimes it's more important to have the feeling and movement."

Last week, Kasben was in Los Gatos, teaching a camp where a group of young girls were preparing a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Instead of the full 80-page script, the campers are taught a condensed, 15-page version.

That's enough to memorize for San Jose's Amanda Tobin, an 11-year-old who came back to camp this year for the second time. She said that even though she's had some theater experience, Shakespeare remains tough.

"It's a different language with different words," she said. "The words are all kind of switched around. Shakespeare never really appealed to me before, but I like it now. It's fun."

Free Shakespeare in the Park stars several well-known Bay Area actors, including Luis Oropeza, Valerie de Jose and Michael Carroll. This year's performance is directed by UCLA faculty member Nancy Keystone.

[ Back to Contents Page | Sunnyvale Sun Home Page | Archives ]

This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, July 29, 1998.
©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.