EMU Theatre brings Shakespeare’s heartwarming tale of mystery and magic to life in an original musical, featuring hit songs from the ’80s and ’90s and dynamic choreographed dance numbers. “The Winter’s Tale: A Musical Adaptation” comes to the Lee Eshleman Studio Theater, with nightly shows at 7:30 p.m. from April 9-12.

Tickets for the show are on sale at and will be available at the door, though seating inside the theater is limited and tickets have been known to sell out quickly. Tickets range from $6 for EMU and JMU students, $10 for children and other students, $18 for seniors (65+), and $20 for adults.

“The Winter’s Tale” follows two kingdoms torn apart by jealousy, a lost queen, and the love that may bring them back together. When Leontes, the tyrannical king of Sicilia (Elie Hoover), suspects his wife Hermione (Jubilee Soper) of unfaithfulness with Polixenes, king of Bohemia (Samuel Castaneda), he becomes so enraged that he orders her jailed and their infant daughter abandoned.

Sixteen years later, as the seasons shift from winter to spring, the story moves to Bohemia, where Leontes’ daughter, Perdita (Emilee White), is now grown and has captured the heart of Florizel (Kayden Beidler), the brash and dramatic son of Polixenes. Will their love be enough to reunite the two kingdoms?

Perhaps best known for the stage direction, “Exit, pursued by a bear,” this sweet and complex romance is written in Shakespeare’s signature iambic pentameter. But this adaptation adds a “nice little twist,” said guest director Haley Davis: a mix of 1980s and ’90s chart-toppers, personally selected by EMU’s talented student cast, woven throughout the play. It’s sure to have the whole audience singing along.

Frequent EMU Theatre collaborator Jim Clemens returns as music director, performing iconic rock ballads and pop rock songs on piano, while student Bryan Joya-Estrada, who also portrays the Shepherd, plays various instruments.

The costumes, designed by Rebecca Bailey, blend early modern and Renaissance elements with an ’80s and ’90s punk rock aesthetic, Davis said.

Rounding out the crew are Shannon Dove as technical director, Sierra Priest as choreographer, and Sarah Peak as stage manager.

The play will be performed in the round, with audience members seated on all sides of the raised stage and in the upper balcony.

“It’s more fun when you have the audience right there at your toes,” said Davis, an administrative-professional faculty member of James Madison University’s School of Theatre and Dance. “You can look up at the heavens or down at the earth, and you have people there to share the moment with.”

It was only after the audition process that it became clear to the production team which play to perform. “In a special way, this play was chosen based on the people rather than the other way around,” she said. “I found that this approach, coupled with the students musically adapting the play, gave the team unique agency in the story they wanted to tell.”

Beidler, who plays the roles of Florizel and Antigonus, said they love how collaborative the show has felt. “It was so fun helping pick the music, and it really feels like we’ve made this show ours,” they said.

Hoover, who portrays Leontes and Autolycus, said, “It’s fun getting to play characters who are both so different from each other and from me.”

One of the play’s most striking moments is when it travels over 16 years, transporting the characters from Sicilia to Bohemia, from a harsh winter to a forgiving spring. The shift has also felt meaningful for the students, who began rehearsals in winter and are gradually emerging into spring themselves.

“I want audiences to walk away with a sense of hope,” Davis said. “Things can look bleak and cold and scary, but there’s something better around the corner if we hold on and let time do what it needs to do.”

Cast
Leontes/Autolycus — Elie Hoover
Hermione — Jubilee Soper
Mamillius/Perdita — Emilee White
Camillo — Erin Batten
Polixenes — Samuel Casteneda
Paulina — Elena Middlebrook
Florizel/Antigonus — Kayden Beidler
Shepherd/Officer — Bryan Joya-Estrada
Lord/Messenger — Kyah Young

Crew
Director — Haley Davis
Music Director — Jim Clemens
Technical Director — Shannon Dove
Costumer — Rebecca Bailey
Choreographer — Sierra Priest
Stage Manager — Sarah Peak

“It is richly comic and has dark undertones, which are rarely explored as fully as we are exploring in our production,” says , director and assistant professor, of his favorite Shakespearean work.

“ opens Wednesday, Nov. 19, at 7:30 p.m. in the Lee Eshleman Studio Theater and continues with nightly performances through Saturday, Nov. 22. Matinees are on Saturday, Nov. 22, and Sunday, Nov. 23 at 3 p.m.

The story revolves around Viola, played by Rachelle Kratz. After the shipwreck, she is rescued on the shores of Illyria, thinking that her twin brother Sebastian (Jeremiah Hines) is dead. She disguises herself as a young man named Cesario, and enters the service of Duke Orsino (Sam Swartzendruber). The Duke believes he is in love with a woman named Olivia (Clara Bush), who falls for Viola’s masculine persona. Love triangles, pranks, and hilarity ensue.

“The language of Shakespeare is passion put to pen,” says Poole. “It takes all of an actor’s physical and mental capacity to play it well.”

Baker, who plays Olivia’s gentlewoman Maria, reads not only lines but personality from the script. “My biggest challenge has been finding the pockets where Shakespeare is telling me secrets about the way I should deliver my lines,” she says. “My character never speaks in iambic pentameter, which means that she is rough around the edges with her speech.”

Her acting process involves taking the script and a backstory she creates, and filing that away. “I keep my brain clear and my body becomes the storyteller for my character,” Baker says.

Swartzendruber humorously describes the month-long experience of learning the Duke’s part, “squinting at a page and having no idea what you’re yelling about,” struggling to heed Poole’s instructions to behave naturally, “because nothing about the situation is anywhere close to natural.”

In the end, though, embodying that foreign character for an audience is what keeps Swartzendruber in the theater. “It’s one of the best feelings I’ve ever experienced,” he says.

Considering the complexities of the set, costumery and props, the technical crew working behind the scenes is multi-faceted. Assistant stage manager Mindy Esworthy calls herself a “jack of all trades during rehearsal.” On any given day, she’ll be taking notes or making props.

“Sometimes the writing [of Shakespeare] can be offputting, and people don’t see how truly creative it is,” says Esworthy. “I’m hoping that our interpretation of Twelfth Night will help show that creative side of the formal language.”

Creative interpretation is a driving force behind this production. An original score by local composer James E. (Jim) Clemens, who has collaborated with EMU musicians in the past, is a highlight, says Poole.

Swartendruber suggests that audience members familiarize themselves with the plot beforehand to better appreciate the show.

“Justin’s directing always twists things in different ways to kill any preconceived ideas people have about the way things are going to turn out,” he says.

Despite its complexity, playgoers should expect anything but stodginess in what Baker calls “the Moulin Rouge version of Twelfth Night.”

Tickets are available at the EMU Box Office in University Commons weekdays from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Costs are adult ($12), senior 65 + ($9), youth up to age 18 ($9), EMU student ($5), and EMU faculty/staff ($9). The Thursday evening performance is “pay what you will” for EMU faculty and staff to benefit the EMU theater scholarship fund.

Performances:

Wednesday, November 19, 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, November 20, 7:30 p.m.
Friday, November 21, 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, November 22, 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Sunday, November 23, 3 p.m.

Whoever said, "’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" may have had the Bard of Avon’s romantic tale in mind.

A 13-member cast will give six performances of William Shakespeare’s "Love’s Labor Lost" Thursday – Saturday, Feb. 18-20 and Feb. 25-27 in the Studio Theater of the University Commons. Curtain time is 7:30 p.m.

There will be a final performance at Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Mar. 21, a co-production of EMU’s theater program and the American Shakespeare Center’s MLitt/MFA program.

Alisha Huber, an MFA candidate at Mary Baldwin College/American Shakespeare Center, is EMU’s guest director for the five-act, 90-minute play.

Learn more about theater at EMU…

Fall workshops offer prep

Huber teamed with theater professor Heidi Winters Vogel througout fall 2009 to deliver a series of Shakespeare workshops on language, stage movement, and professional auditions.

"The first thing I wanted to accomplish in these workshops was to take Shakespeare off his pedestal and out of English class. Everyone who came was there because they were excited about doing Shakespeare," said Huber of the fall workshops. Read more >>

About the play

In Shakespeare’s giddy word-feast, Ferdinand, King of Navarre, and three of his friends give up women and the world to devote themselves to learning. But their foolish vows cannot bar love from their kingdom or their hearts – certainly not when four high-spirited ladies arrive on the scene. Their unexpected entrance throws the whole countryside into romantic upheaval.

Ticket info

Tickets are $5 for general admission and are available through EMU’s theater office at 540 432-4674 and at the door. Tickets can also be ordered on line at theater@emu.edu.

Alisha Huber, an MFA student working through Blackfriars Playhouse, leads EMU students in a Shakespeare movement workshop this fall in the studio theater. Photo by Brent Anders

Alisha Huber, currently an MFA directing student at Mary Baldwin, will direct Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labors Lost” at EMU in February. She’s scheduled three workshops throughout the fall 2009 semester in EMU’s studio theater (soon to be named after alumnus Lee Eshleman) to provide early training for EMU students who will audition. (The final workshop will be held Saturday, Dec. 12 from noon to 2 p.m.)

“Love’s Labors Lost” is scheduled for performance at the Blackfriars on March 21 as part of Huber’s MFA thesis project in addition to the EMU performances slated for Feb. 18-20 and 25-27.

Heidi Winters Vogel, EMU theater professor

Alisha brings a wealth of Shakespeare experience to EMU,” says Heidi Winters Vogel, theater professor at EMU. “She directed performances of Julius Caesar this summer in both Michigan and New York City.”

“I’m really looking forward to this final workshop,” says EMU student Steven Stauffer. “It will give me a great chance to practice my audition ahead of time and get some crucial feedback from the director.”

The challenge of Shakespeare

“The first thing I wanted to accomplish in these workshops was to take Shakespeare off his pedestal and out of English class. Everyone who came was there because they were excited about doing Shakespeare,” says Huber.

EMU students participate in a Shakespeare workshop led by Alisha Huber this fall in the studio theater. Photo by Brent Anders

Previous workshops this fall were “Shakespeare in Your Mouth,” which focused on elminating the language barrier and destroying preconceptions of what Shakespearean actors should sound like, and “Shakespeare on Your Feet,” which dealt largely with movement and staging.

“My focus was to acclimate the students to the joys and complications of original practices staging,” says Huber of the movement workshop.” The best exercise was about acting a set that one doesn’t have!”

About the final workshop

The final workshop, to be held Saturday, Dec. 12 from noon to 2 p.m., will prepare students for a classical audition, something many will be doing for “Love’s Labors Lost.”

“The Shakespeare workshops are not required for participation in ‘Love’s Labors Lost’ during the spring 2010 semester,” says Vogel, “but they’re a fun way to improve your comfort and knowledge of the art of Shakespeare.”

Participation in the final workshop is limited to the first 20 folks. No preparation is necessary. For more information, contact the theater department at (540) 432-4360 or theater@emu.edu.

Visit emu.edu/theater to learn more about theater at EMU!

The CRASH HOUSE Collaborative Theater Project, a new program in EMU’s theater department, has taken William Shakespeare’s tragedy, "Othello," and reinvented it.

In "O: I Am a Murderer," six high school students are cast in Shakespeare’s tragedy, only to find their lives beginning to mirror the play. As they switch back and forth between Shakespearian dialog and the struggles of a modern teenager, the separation of drama from reality becomes more and more obscured.

The one-act play was written by recent EMU theater graduate Pam Mandigo, based on material generated by CRASH HOUSE participants from local high schools: Lindsey Fitzgerald, Patrice Hostetter, Liz Marin, Jeremy Morris, Emma Serrels, Mary Sodano and Mandy Stoll.

Heidi Vogel Winters, associate professor of theater

The play is directed by Heidi Winters Vogel, associate professor of theater at EMU, and will be presented 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 24 in Lehman Auditorium.

Cast members are

• Brent Anders, Souderton, Pa., Christopher Dock Mennonite High School
• Joel DeWald and Nathan Kauffman, Goshen, Ind., Bethany Christian High School
• Liz Marin, Harrisonburg, Eastern Mennonite High School
• Greta Shenk, Harrisonburg, EMHS
• Laura Wheatley, Charlottesville, Rappahannock County High School.

Costumes were designed by Alisha Huber and sound designer is Praveen Chhetri.

Finding Original, Collaborative Voices

According to Winters Vogel, the purpose of the CRASH HOUSE theater experiment is "to aid a diverse group of high school students in finding original, collaborative voices that will serve to bridge the gap between disparate subcultures and bring them together in a reconciling way."

Read more about the new program’s inception.

In addition, she said, "Students are learning to draw upon important voices of the past and present while discovering how to mold these voices into a new instrument of peace.

"In essence, we’re shaking up Shakespeare to empower local high school students to find their voice," Winters Vogel added.

The group first read and discussed "Othello" and then dissected and reshaped the play in collaboration with Winters Vogel and Mandigo.

Mandigo then took the generated material and synthesized it into an original text.

"After we stage the play on the 24th, we’ll take it to high schools during the rest of the 2008-09 school year", Winters Vogel said.

Shakespeare’s "Othello, The Moor of Venice," is believed to have been written around 1603. As a testament to its popularity, the play appeared in seven editions between 1622 and 1705. With its varied themes of racism, love, jealousy and betrayal, the work remains relevant today.

The collaborative project is being funded in part by the Arts Council of the Valley and Teatro Chirmol, a bilingual theater workshop for area youth.

Admission to the play is free, but donations will be accepted to support the CRASH HOUSE Collaborative Theater Project for 2009.

EMU’s theater department has announced the creation of a stimulating new program – the "Crash House Collaborative Theater Project."

Heidi Vogel Winters, associate professor of theater

According to Heidi Vogel Winters, associate professor of theater at EMU, its purpose is "to aid a diverse group of high school students in finding original, collaborative voices that will serve to bridge the gap between disparate subcultures and bring them together in a reconciling way.

In addition, she said, "Students will learn to draw upon important voices of the past and present while discovering how to mold these voices into a new instrument of peace."

Five Participating Schools

Crash House will select three student applicants from each of the five local high schools – Harrisonburg, Eastern Mennonite, Broadway, Turner Ashby and Spotswood – to take part in this theater experiment. The group will read and discuss Shakespeare’s "Othello" and then dissect and reshape the play in collaboration with director Heidi Winters Vogel, recent EMU theater graduate and playwright Pam Mandigo and others.

Following this process, Mandigo will take the generated material and synthesize it into an original text. While her work is in progress, students will reconvene and present the work-in-progress to family, friends, and community members in the EMU Mainstage Theater.

"We hope to then stage the play and tour the participating high schools during the 2008-2009 school year, Winters Vogel said.

Shakespeare’s tragedy, "Othello, The Moor of Venice," is believed to have been written around 1603. As a testament to its popularity, the play appeared in seven editions between 1622 and 1705. With its varied themes of racism, love, jealousy and betrayal, the work remains relevant today.

All Students Welcome

Participation in Crash House is not limited to those with theater experience. Students with broad interests, including communication, visual arts, writing, music, languages and storytelling, are welcome to apply. All student participation is free.

Group meetings will be held 3-5 p.m. on June 3, 5, 10, and 12 and from noon to 4 p.m. on June 16-20 and 23-27 in the EMU Studio Theater. Transportation will be arranged for students who need it.

"This four-week collaboration needs students willing to dig deep," Winters Vogel said. "It needs students who speak different languages, who come from different places and represent diverse cultures. It needs students who can come together and wrestle with their differences and create something that belongs to all of us.

"In essence, we’ll be shaking up Shakespeare to empower local high school students find their voice," she added.

The collaborative project is being funded in part by the Arts Council of the Valley and Teatro Chirmol, a bilingual theater workshop for area youth.

For more information, contact Winters Vogel at 540-432-4452; email: heidi.vogel@emu.edu.