To be or not to be? That is the question local youths ponder before they choose to fill their summer afternoons at Camp Shakespeare.
For 13 years, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF) has brought young people to the CU-Boulder campus through the Camp Shakespeare educational program to learn about Shakespeare in performance and gain skills that are useful on and off stage. This summer campers spent three weeks developing techniques, rehearsing famed plays, and eventually performed an abridged version of one of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival season plays.
Fourteen-year-old Cole Polglaze has been attending Camp Shakespeare since she was nine years old. Much like the passion revealed by one of Shakespeare’s characters, Polglaze professed her love for Camp Shakespeare.
“It’s the Shakespeare that brings me here every year,” she said. “Shakespeare started me on acting. I love his plays, his language, and I love his characters. I can attach to them, and I see myself in them.”
Working in small groups, Camp Shakespeare students learn from the professional thespians who take center stage during the annual summer Colorado Shakespeare Festival.
“The best part is kids get to experience this with the help of professional actors,” said Amanda Giguere, CSF literary manager. “They feel like they are included in the festival, and it’s neat to see them meeting the actor who plays their role.”
In between a foam-sword-fighting lesson with CSF’s Romeo and Juliet actor, Benaiah Anderson, Polglaze said working with the actors is one of the reasons why she enjoys camp.
“It’s so amazing to meet the actors on and off stage,” she said. “You can relate to them, because you might be playing the same character.”
New this year, Camp Shakespeare organizers added weeklong training sessions for a younger audience – 6-9-year-olds. The new venture – called Shakespeare’s Sprites – engaged Camp Shakespeare youths like Polglaze, who were given the opportunity to pay-it-forward as supportive teachers for the Sprites program.
“We wanted to target a younger group. Sprites is a great opportunity to cultivate them and introduce the kids to basic Shakespeare,” Giguere said. “It’s just a lot of fun.”
At the end of their respective training weeks, the three Sprites groups each presented ten-minute performances featuring foam-sword duels and verses from Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer’s Night Dream for family and friends. In early August, the Camp Shakespeare 14-18-year-olds’ cohort publicly performed abridged versions of Romeo and Juliet, and the 10-13-year-olds performed abbreviated versions of The Comedy of Errors on the Colorado Shakespeare Festival Green and also in the indoor University Theatre Mainstage.
Judging by the smiles on the budding actors’ faces as they took their bows, it is more fun to be a Camp Shakespeare camper than not to be.