Study abroad in England was certainly worthwhile for Susan Lovelace, head of Sebastian River High School’s International Baccalaureate program. And it has surely benefited the community since then, through an annual free Shakespeare play and workshops, staged by an English acting troupe, all students at the University of Cambridge, whom Lovelace was once asked to help.
The play this year, “Much Ado About Nothing,” to be staged in early September, is the sixth Shakespeare play put on at Sebastian River High by the Cambridge American Stage Tour, or CAST, as they are known.
Along with acting, the weekend will include much ado about writing, as the Laura Riding Jackson Foundation is billing it, having taken the event under its wing.
This year, for the first time, the cast and crew from Cambridge are giving workshops under the auspices of the foundation, the county’s literary arts league, through a $10,000 grant it received from Quail Valley Charities for the foundation’s Teen Writers Workshop program.
That program will now include both the Cambridge players’ customary acting workshop as well as a new playwriting workshop, believed to be a first in 15 years of teen writers workshops, according to Charlotte Terry, a co-founder of the Laura Riding Jackson Foundation.
While the play is free to the public young and old, the invitation to participate in the workshops extends to high school students countywide, including homeschoolers; Lovelace’s contacts are also inviting schools in St. Lucie and Brevard counties. There is essentially no limit on how many can participate. “We have pretty much unlimited space,” says Terry. “Because we’re doing it on a Saturday, we have the whole school.”
Terry anticipates a high level of interest, based on the crowd who showed up for a past workshop in screenwriting.
The acting workshop takes place on Friday afternoon. “It’s an up-on-your-feet, fun, lively workshop,” says Lovelace. “They send me in mid-August a list of five or six different workshop offerings and the kids rotate through them, usually acting games and theater workouts like looking closely at a monologue and acting it out.”
Then on Saturday morning, they are offering a workshop in playwriting. All Terry knows is that it will likely tie into Shakespeare.
“I don’t know exactly what they’re going to do,” says Lovelace with a laugh. Since few of the workshop participants are likely to have experience in playwriting, the subject is wide open, she says.
As for the play itself, “Much Ado about Nothing” is considered among Shakespeare’s best comedies. It is written mostly in prose, not verse, and has the usual love and deceit with some useful moralizing thrown in.
Only once did Lovelace have to put the clamp on the bawdy Shakespeare and turn down “Measure for Measure,” a few years back. “I teach the kids what the play’s about and to try to explain what’s happening in that one is a bit much for high school.”
Lovelace, who arrived at Sebastian High in 1998, taught English prior to taking over the IB program; she also teaches college-level classes online at Florida Institute of Technology.
She became familiar with the Teen Writers Workshop program through Pam Proctor, a consultant on college admissions. She now leads the Teen Writers Workshop every fall on college essay writing. After giving her talk on “the college hook” to Sebastian students, Proctor introduced Lovelace to Terry.
Last year, Lovelace joined the board of the Laura Riding Jackson Foundation.
“We wanted a liaison to the schools because it’s important to get the word out to the kids about the workshops. She’s just been fantastic,” says Terry.
What started as Lovelace’s own study of Shakespeare in Cambridge, working toward her master’s degree in English, turned into a great summer job for four years: as liaison between University of Cambridge professors and students visiting through a consortium of Florida universities.
It was the director of that program, Ben Wiley, who called Lovelace for help booking venues for the Cambridge student company for a September 2008 tour of “Henry V.”
“I was talking to colleges and I thought, wait a minute: I have a performing arts center. Why not here at Sebastian?” Lovelace recalls.
For the most part, CAST appears at public theaters and at universities including Brown and MIT.
“There is no drama major at Cambridge, so anyone who wants to act joins a student company,” says Lovelace, attesting to the troupe’s talent.
With so much competition among various productions, “the trick is to get a twist” in the play, she says, like CAST’s version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in which all the characters wore clown costumes – Bottom was Groucho Marx.
Sets are minimal as are props. For a production of “The Tempest,” Prospero was a photographer and the entire set was his photography workshop.
“The Brits come in and they’ve got their little routine down,” setting up for the production and the workshops, she says.
“They’re very witty and they have a lot of fun. They’re not too far from the kids’ age,” says Lovelace.
Terry attests to their charm. “They’re very out-going, very sophisticated, very cool. Just a neat bunch of kids.”
The student troupe typically stays with American families while on tour to cut costs and promote cultural exchange. “They like to stay with local families to get the flavor of America,” says Lovelace. “For many of them in the past, it’s been their first trip. They love Vero and Sebastian. They love the beach. We’re one of their favorite venues.”
Terry is one of several local host families. This year, on Friday night, organizers are throwing a barbeque for the troupe at the new park facilities at Sebastian Inlet State Park. “That way they get to see the surfers,” says Terry.
Lovelace would love to take the free performance outside some day. The last year she was in Cambridge, 2004, she had a weekly goal of going to one of the many Shakespeare plays staged in public gardens around Cambridge. She dreams of one day taking on the odds of bad weather in hurricane season and staging Shakespeare at Riverside Park or another public area outdoors.
“I’ve thought about it long and hard,” she says. “Maybe now’s the time to set up a dialogue with Riverside Theatre for doing that next year.”
All high school students – grade 9 through 12 – are invited to the free acting workshop, Friday, Sept. 5, from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. Juniors and Seniors are invited to the writing workshop, also free, Saturday, Sept. 6 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., with lunch provided.
The performance of “Much Ado About Nothing” is Saturday, Sept. 6 at 7 p.m.
The workshops and play are at Sebastian River High School Performing Arts Center. Go to the www.lauraridingjackson.com for more information.