A violent storm leads to a shipwreck, a case of mistaken identity, clever disguises and comic subplots – it must be Shakespeare.
For the second year running, students from the North Fork will present the “Playing @ Will Spring Festival” in the outdoor amphitheater at Southold School. The festival features jugglers, games, music and a performance.
This year director John Tramontana and his students tackle Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night; or What You Will,” a romantic comedy written in the early 1600s.
The performance and accompanying festival spring from an after-school Shakespeare class called Playing @ Will that Tramontana, Greenport High School’s math teacher, began in 2013.
He always felt that Shakespeare could be made accessible to children and as it turns out, it is.
“Children don’t come into Shakespeare with any preconceived notions that it is too difficult,” he says. “Shakespeare is meant to be heard; you’ve got to get up and moving as opposed to just sitting and reading, discussing theory.”
When kids hear it and perform it, they figure it out, he says.
Over 40 kids signed up for this year’s class; 20 are in the acting company and the others work offstage on publicity, set construction and other technical aspects of the production.
Rehearsals began at the end of March, sometimes in Southold and other times in Greenport. Laura Kim Dooley, a teacher at Southold, acted as a liaison between schools, Pastor Tom Lamothe helped out as a text coach and Greenport High School secretary Diane Petersen rounded up the costumes.
Tramontana also arranged for Annie Considine, a teaching artist from Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass. to come down for a two-week residency.
Funding for the project was provided by Founders Tavern, Silver Sands Hotel and Crowley Marine Contracting. The school also made a contribution.
The Playing @ Will Spring Festival will be held on Friday, June 2 behind the elementary school on Oaklawn Avenue in Southold. The festival begins at 4 p.m. and the performance starts at 5.
