A BRIEF HISTORY

Lopez Island’s Community Shakespeare Company grew out of the annual class play staged by Susan Wilson and myself in the school’s Alternative Room Cooperative (ARC).  Susan had been doing plays with students for at least a year before we joined forces and I introduced Shakespeare to the K-5 classroom in 1999.  We began by using an adaptation of Twelfth Night by Canadian author/teacher, Lois Burdett. We gave one performance at the Legion Hall, using plastic cubes for set pieces, tarps to cover the stage walls, and a few costume items from home.

The play was so successful, and frankly so much fun, that we almost immediately decided to do another.  I adapted A Christmas Carol, borrowing Burdett’s formula, which combined narration with snippets of dialogue, written in verse.  This time, other parents volunteered to create a set and costumes.

In the years that followed, we did three more Burdett adaptations of Shakespeare. It soon became evident that the students were outgrowing the narrative format, so I began adding dialogue (and even characters), and subtracting narration.  The other significant development was that the plays became so popular that many students outside the ARC classroom wanted to be in them.  In 2002, we created the not-for-profit entity, Community Shakespeare Company.

CSC’s first production was As You Like It, which represented a new and bold venture in other ways.  Many of our former K-5 students were now in middle school, and even high school.  They were well beyond elementary versions of Shakespeare. We decided that they were ready for the “real thing.”  I edited the script but did not change any of the words.  It was a “brave new world” for our student actors, but after a few weeks, they learned how to speak and understand Elizabethan English.  They were mostly in grades 6-10.

In spring, 2003, I wrote my first Shakespeare adaptation: The Comedy Of Errors, which was performed by K-5 actors. They needed a script which simplified and shortened Shakespeare’s play but which avoided narration, and which acted as a natural springboard to the original texts.  The formula I developed for Comedy has steadily been modified, so that subsequent adaptations (Shrew, As You Like It, Two Gents, Midsummer) use minimal modern language, and are viable for students from elementary to high school.

In the fall of 2003, our older students performed All’s Well That Ends Well, in the original text. At this point we essentially had two companies of youth actors, both wanting to continue to do Shakespeare. Our production values continued to rise, with more elaborate costumes, and music as an integral part of the shows.  Adult volunteers continued to come out of the woodwork saying, “I’d like to participate.  What can I do?”  Answering this question became part of our job.

For Susan and myself, the task of continuing to do the plays appeared daunting, but we were committed to offering the program.  Our solution was to combine the shows into one Fall Festival Of Shakespeare, which we did in 2004, mounting The Taming Of The Shrew for younger actors, and Love’s Labor’s Lost for older.  We also determined that the ages of the two companies would be (approximately) grades 3-7 for the younger play, and grades 7-12 for the older. 

We’re often asked, “How can you do two plays at once?  Isn’t that crazy?”  In truth, it’s the coordination of the many students, parents, and adult volunteers that is difficult.  By combining the shows into one time frame, we mobilize this gallant band only once per year.  Ten months pass, and miraculously, everyone wants to do it again.  What it means for the Directors is that we essentially do CSC full time from late August through November.

In 2005 we produced As You Like It (adapted) and Twelfth Night (original text); in 2006, The Two Genlemen Of Verona (adapted) and Measure For Measure.  In 2007, A Midsummer Night’s Dream was our adapted play, and we again broke new ground by opening Romeo and Juliet to adult actors and introducing stage combat, taught by a professional instructor. These extraordinary elements of realism greatly enhanced that particular production, and extended our definition of “community” in Community Shakespeare.

Richard Carter
June, 2008