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Bringing the Bard to South Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell South Medford High School freshmen Kevin Salisbury, left, and Chris McLean don sunglasses for a modern touch to their rendition of a scene from Shakespeare�s "Twelfth Night." Playing a few scenes and watching a professional production of the play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival helps them and other students in Mary Boyarsky�s class better understand the Bard�s difficult language and complicated themes. High school English students get into Shakespeare By Bill Varble Chris McLean and Kevin Salisbury had some trouble getting into Shakespeare. The two freshmen at South Medford High School say the Bard�s language was the hardest part. But on stage at the school�s Little Theater, the two are playing the parts of Sebastian and Antonio, characters in Shakespeare�s comedy "Twelfth Night." They�ve donned neckties and sunglasses to present the scene in a contemporary American milieu. Salisbury, as Antonio, tells McLean, as Sebastian, that he had once been an enemy of Duke Orsino�s and so cannot be seen in Illyria, the duke�s realm. "It�s a turning point," McLean explains later. "You realize there�s a true friendship between these guys." Thirty-four young people in Mary Boyarsky�s freshman honors English class at South are among students from up and down the West Coast who have been meeting the Bard through classes keyed to performances specially priced for students at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland this month. About 69,000 young people in school groups from as far away as Arizona, Idaho and Hawaii attend the festival during the season. Boyarsky got fired up when she took part in a five-day Shakespeare for Teachers workshop at the festival with two dozen teachers from around the country, then took what she learned into the classroom. "If I was going to put it into effect, I wanted to do it right away," she says. Which is why her students first read "Twelfth Night," then saw OSF�s production Sept. 20 and have now wound up presenting their interpretations of scenes from the play on stage at South for other students. Before McLean and Salisbury, another group took the stage in 1970s garb to present a scene in which mistaken identities lead to a beating and nearly to a swordfight. Despite the Afro hairdos, plenty of polyester and styles that owe more to the Blues Brothers than the Bard, the lines are Shakepeare�s, complete with prithees and miladies. "They kept saying, �I don�t get this�," Boyarsky says of her students at the start of the term. "I told them it would click into place." "A lot of kids thought it was boring," Salisbury says. "But most like it now." The festival is offering special student matinees all month, during which students see plays at the festival�s Bowmer Theater on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. Plays include Shakepeare�s "Henry V," Tennessee Williams� "The Night of the Iguana," Kaufman and Hart�s "The Man Who Came to Dinner" and others. (For group tickets or information, teachers can call the OSF box office at 488-5406). "Twelfth Night" is a comedy of love and mistaken identities. A duke loves a countess he woos through an intermediary. There are disguises aplenty, people falling in love with the wrong people and a sub-plot involving two carousing lords, a philosophical fool and a comic villain. It�s among Shakespeare�s three "mature" comedies (along with "Much Ado About Nothing" and "As You Like It"). It�s also considered one of his most complex, seeming to question romantic conventions of the day and to contain disturbing undertones. "What did you like?" Boyarsky asks her students after the two scenes. They like the choreography of the fight scene, the slapping sounds one student actor made to go with the action, the melding of Elizabethan England and contemporary times. McLean says he struggled with "Twelfth Night" until he saw it on stage. "Watching it was really helpful," he says. Once the class got used to the language and understood the story, students say the toughest thing was the sheer length of the play (the festival�s production runs over three hours). "Seat cushions and a Big Gulp at intermission," one suggested. Why the modern duds? "Just to do something different," Salisbury says. "Whipping off the sunglasses was an extra attitude touch." "And we had the clothes," McLean adds. And that Shakespeare guy? Pretty cool, most agreed. "He was really ahead of his time," Salisbury says. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.