Northern Stage All School Shakespere Assembly

On Friday, October 15th Northern Stage performed a scene from The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. They spoke of combining this with The Tamer Tamed by John Fletcher in an original adaptation by their Artistic Director, Brooke Ciardelli. They called this collaboration, The Shrew Tamer. Their web site described it as follows: "In Shakespeare's hilarious and controversial comedy, Petruchio tames his love, Kate. Twenty years later, in Fletcher's riotous follow-up, Petruchio's new wife shows him a thing or two about being tamed. Northern Stage Artistic Director Brooke Ciardelli combines the two for a madcap evening of comedy, music and dance."

From our conversations with Northern Stage prior to their visit to Mascoma, and from their study guides, we expected to get a little of both sides of the play (both Shakespere and Fletcher). Six actors and the Northern Stage Education Director arrived for the assembly. Erin, (pictured above center, in the cap), introduced the scene as if he were introducing a rock band. He described that the actors were going to portray workers for a very mean master. He described the master as a "mofo." He flashed hand gestures to the audience as if we were all part of his gang. He spoke of his career at high school which he said he spent in the detention room and then he motivated the actors to perform the scene.

The scene was a high energy scene, hectic and kinetic. The acting was excellent. Then, after about six minutes, they were done. They sat in a group and took questions. Each of them described their careers and spoke of the theatre profession. Experiencing the Arts Director, Christopher Morse, asked if they were going to perform a scene from the second half of the play so that we could see some of John Fletcher's counterpoint to the Taming of the Shrew. He seemed hopeful that Northern Stage would perform more than one six minute scene for the assembly.

The actors decided that they would show us how to make stage fights look real. They blocked out a few fight moves. They took some students from the audience to teach them how to make it appear that someone was pulling your hair. The trick was that the person who's hair was being pulled actually directs the action. In this way they don't actually get their hair pulled. This interaction was very popular with the students.

They asked if the students wanted to see a love scene. Two of the actors performed a short love scene and kiss. After the kiss, again, they sat to take questions. There was plenty of time for more scenes. We did not see any acting demonstrating the contrast between Shakespere and John Fletcher or the way Brooke Ciardelli blended the two plays.

The sixteen students in Experiencing the Arts, and some of the Shakespere class (who had read the study guide) expected something different from Northern Stage. The rest of the school, had no idea what was coming. Everybody enjoyed the acting, learning about careers in the theatre, and how to make it look like you are pulling someone's hair without hurting them. A huge turn up of students at the end spoke of the popularity of the group. After the assembly, Education Director, Megan Keenan explained that they were unable to perform many of the scenes because the leads were union actors and this prevented them from extra shows such as our assembly.

Some of the students wrote their reactions:

"The Shakespere play with the Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed was good. I liked how the "big guy" showed us how they fought in plays and made it look real. It liked how he talked to us. It was like he was on our level. He did not talk down to us. He talked to us. Over all, I enjoyed Northern Stage coming to our school."

"I thought the play was good, but, they should have done the whole thing. Erin was funny. I think he should come back and do some comedy stuff -- he was that funny."

"I was very disappointed with the assembly. I was expecting to see an actual play instead of one little scene. The guy who said "mofo" was awesome and so was everything else. I was just expecting allot more."

"I liked the idea of Northern Stage coming to our school, but I was disappointed that they didn't do more scenes. However, the actors were amusing, especially the big guy, Erin. Despite the fact that they only did one scene, they acted well in that scene. I was hoping they would do something from the Tamer Tamed, but they didn't."