Category Archives: Shakespeare

Fall 2025 “The Tempest” Entry #2

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The Diary of the New Girl.

We started this week with a photoshoot around London with the 5 of us and the amazing Robin Savage. The photos range from “laughing – you love each other – front picture of a sitcom dvd” to “grungy moody brooding debut album art”. We make our way back to the rehearsal room for an afternoon of music, with the incredible Tom Chapman. Tom did music on a previous AFTLS show, and has also worked (as an actor) separately with Anna (Caliban, Gonzalo) and I, so the vibe is immediately chummy & relaxed – the perfect combination for vocal folds. We jump straight into three part harmony.

Let me tell you that I can SING like Mariah Carey… in the shower – in front of other people, those weird things called ‘nerves’ creep in and I seem to lose any hope of picking up a melody. The others support me, however, and we all work really hard. Tom is patiently plucking on his guitar (these harmonies are not messing about) and by the end of the day we could take our little band to X factor and have a good stab at being the next big thing.

By the time Wednesday comes round we’re pretty exhausted, having spent lots of the day trying to figure out how we create ‘strange shapes’ and a ‘magical banquet’. Lots of fantastic ideas are batted around and we try every one of them. Some don’t quite hit, or, they’re fantastic, but we don’t have time or bodies to pull them off as exquisitely as they deserve. In a moment of madness we try playing with ‘Laban Efforts’ under some sheets. Jokes are made about this being what we study at Conservatoires, and we try to decide if it’s slightly too silly or maybe quite genius. We zoom the American team, who are wonderful – answering all our questions, and head to the pub with giddy anticipation of the tour in our step. The other cast members relaying stories of previous tours, and I feel tipsy from excitement before the beers even touched my lips.

By Friday we’ve touched every scene of the play – we don’t yet have a proper shape to this thing, we don’t have costumes, we don’t have the answers to a lot of problems, but we have hard work, we have the text & we have each others backs.

Reflecting on this week, I am thankful for a lot of things; the patience of my other cast members, coffee, hats and string instruments, but mostly I am thankful for the people in this world who are silly enough to make shapes under a sheet with such unabashed commitment that an audience maybe just maybe will see magical creatures, and will be able to sit in a theatre with other people and disappear, all together, into our story for a little while.

Phoebe

Fall 2025 “The Tempest”: Week 1

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The Diary of a New Girl.

Day one and I wake up 40 minutes before my alarm and lie there staring at the ceiling, Shakespeare’s gnarly act 2 scene 1 verse running through my head; I’ve slept terribly. Probably because I’m extremely nervous. Always one to have suffered from intense imposter syndrome, this is made worse by the fact I am the only one in the cast who’s never done a tour with this company before and I have no idea what to expect from the process. What if I ask a stupid question? What if they all hate me? What if I can’t do it? The kind of thoughts we all had before our first day of school. Being an actor is like having your first day of school every time you have a new job. I jump on the tube. 

Brixton is like a chaotic hug from a drunk girl in a bathroom at a club; smelly, hot, too much, a bit terrifying but also gorgeous and kind.

I arrive over an hour early (I know… I have a problem), grab an iced coffee (the London heat wave is not messing about), and wait (iambic pentameter ferreting around my brain). 

I’m a London girl born and bred, so I feel right at home where we’re rehearsing. The room however is like a sauna a couple of measly fans battling against climate change. The others, one by one, enter the space, and, not surprisingly, they’re all utterly charming, gorgeous & friendly (I am immediately more relaxed- maybe I’ll make friends!). Although, surprisingly, we had all dressed very similarly. We laugh about this and decide it is a good omen for our cast – same language different font. 

Day one already makes me feel calmer, but day two is when we really get the ball rolling with all five of us in the room something feels electric, and I start to get excited during our workshop with the incredible RC Annie discussing our shared language as a group and how we will begin to tackle this mammoth task.

We made all priorities clear as a group and write them on a whiteboard. These include honesty, kindness, direction, and beer.

Walking into work my third day from the station I start to contemplate how incredibly is it that I get sit in this room with four other passionate people discussing the meaning of this intricate story, and stretching our imaginations like a muscle. It really is a fantastic acting exercise I’ve never experienced before. We play with creating a storm using our voices, using our bodies, using movement. 5 very sweaty actors creating magic. 

We continue, fuelled by incredible Caribbean food provided by Francis & Arlene (our hosts at the rehearsal space),  to navigate our way through the play. It’s a bit like being in a tempest ourselves. Sometimes there’s calm waters, sometimes waves that we have to work together as a team to overcome, but by the end of the week we seem to have something resembling a functioning system which allows us to try ideas. As Sam (playing Sebastian & Ferdinand) so perfectly put it “we are holding each other to a high standard with kindness”. 

I get on the tube home on Friday, imposter syndrome has taken a back seat, this is one hell of a team and we all feel really excited about the next few weeks of discovering this island and the characters on it. Bring on week 2. 

Phoebe

Playing with Puppets at the 2024 Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival

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By Jennifer Birkett

Greg Corbino’s journey to becoming a puppet designer started when he was a little kid. As he says, “it’s something I have always done and was interested in,” but it was not until he encountered Bread and Puppet Theatre in college that he really became fully invested in it. Much of Corbino’s style–specifically his use of cheap, resourceful materials (like cardboard and papier-mâché) along with a focus on colors and shapes, as well as building puppets to scale–is influenced by Peter Schumann, the co-founder of Bread and Puppet Theater, whose work really took off in the 1960s making giant puppets with kids in the Bronx.

Unlike the puppets many audiences encounter in musicals like The Lion King and Into the Woods, Corbino’s puppets focus on accessibility, both in material and in utility. In other words, they do not require significant training to operate. As Corbino highlights, compared to silicones, foams, or tricky items like toxic glues often used in theatrical puppetry, “we are using materials used by communities all over the world for parades, protests, and elementary school plays.” The puppets are representations of a way of working, one which requires many hands and collaboration. Indeed, while designing and building these puppets, Corbino worked alongside volunteer company members, as well as artisan Aimee Cole, who brought a unique costuming perspective, and director Sara Holdren, whose Arden world inspired Corbino’s interplay between color and light. Ultimately, the puppets reflect the collective theme of community central to this production of As You Like It.

As an audience member, you can expect large-scale 3D puppets, one which requires 5 actors to operate, but also a herd of deer that are flat and two dimensional. A new design for Corbino, the deer legs are articulated with a series of bolts and elastics allowing them to appear to leap across the stage. This choice to emphasize the “gesture” of a deer rather than go for a “realistic” one leans into the age-old magic of theatre, the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief. As Corbino puts it, “we are asking the audience to do the work of joining us in this magical place where objects come to life.”

We hope you’ll join us at this magical production this summer. While this is the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival’s first foray into puppetry, we have a feeling it won’t be our last.

“As You Like It” and Finding “much virtue in ‘if’”

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By Jennifer Birkett

In the late 1590s, William Shakespeare wrote a theatrical comedy based on the then popular romance titled Rosalynde by Thomas Lodge. As in Lodge’s romance, Shakespeare’s As You Like It centers on Rosalind, a vibrant female heroine, who dons a male disguise to flee the unwelcoming court of her uncle, Duke Frederick, and escape into the forest to find her banished father, Duke Senior (Frederick’s older brother and rightful Duke). While in disguise, she comes upon Orlando, the youngest brother of Oliver de Boys, who has fled into the forest seeking safety from his violent brother. Although the two have met before, Orlando does not recognize Rosalind in her male clothes. She takes the opportunity to use her disguise to befriend Orlando and sort out if his supposed “love” for her is sincere or not. Of course, it would not be a Shakespeare play if there were no other plot lines to entertain the audience and further complicate Rosalind’s journey.

There are multiple legends tied to As You Like It. One being that Shakespeare, himself, played Adam, the old servant of the de Boys household, in the original production. Another being that the title refers to Shakespeare’s frustration at meeting a growing audience’s demands: “Fine, have it as you like it!” However, as Sara Holdren, the director of this summer’s NDSF production, notes, the title also hints at the play’s deep longing. Woven beneath the lighthearted comedy is a desire for a world as one likes it, where one can love freely, be seen genuinely, and escape artificiality.

As a pastoral comedy, As You Like It juxtaposes a court corrupted by the hatred of brothers with the simple communal existence in the forest of Arden. When Orlando arrives in Arden, he observes that “there is no clock in the forest.” This play, and this NDSF 2024 production, invites both its characters and audience to set aside the stifling demands of everyday life and embrace alternate realities. What might the world look like if, for example, women had the same courtesies as men? What if class did not matter? Or if there were no greed for power? Or if we treated the earth with more care? As Touchstone, the play’s clown puts it, there’s “much virtue in ‘if.’”

As You Like It is an experimentation in “if.” From its abundance of song to its philosophical musings on performativity and its all-too-convenient conclusion, the play exposes Shakespeare’s writerly process, putting more stock in asking questions than answering them. It invites an openness to revise, to think again, and to imagine otherwise. Similarly, this summer’s production invites us to reimagine our traditional notions of gender, community, politics, and even Shakespeare to inquire after a world “as we like it.” We hope you’ll set aside your clock to join us in the Forest of Arden this Aug 20-September 1st! As an audience member, you can expect to be enchanted by the festival’s first-ever incorporation of puppets, the bold transition from a tight-laced court setting to a artistic Arden, and original songs performed live on stage by our actors.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Spring 2024 Tour: Entry #9

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By Sam Hill

For the Lord heareth the poor, and despiseth not his prisoners.
Psalm 69:33

And so just like that, we entered our final week of the tour. Looking back it felt like it had been a long tour, but also a short tour. When I think back to all the places we have been: Indiana, New York State, Vermont, Texas, California and Alabama, it feels like we have been away for a long time. But then again, it some ways it feels like yesterday that we were doing our read-through in Covent Garden, London.

Florence is a pretty, affluent town in northern Alabama. Its high street leads up to the university which is a short walk from our hotel. If you turn out of our hotel and walk down the hill, you find yourself at the Tennessee River. It’s big and beautiful, people fish on the river bank and you feel like Huckleberry Finn might pass by on a raft at any given moment.

We had three shows to do here, one at the university, one for high schoolers and one at Limestone Correctional Facility: a prison about an hour and half outside of Florence. Most of us had never performed in a prison before, including me. Going into the building is an austere experience, but once you are inside (literally and figuratively) you sort of forget you are in a prison. We were shown into a room, where we would perform, which was reminiscent of a church hall. The floor had been mopped and cleaned so well we could have had our lunch on it. We set up and the audience entered.

What struck us most was the focus this audience had on the play. Every single man was paying a deep attention to the play. They had been studying A Midsummer Night’s Dream through a program run by the University of North Alabama. They were well equipped with a ‘No Fear Shakespeare’ script in hand (this edition offers a modern English version of the story alongside the original), pencils and a list of characters in the play. They were to listen, to learn and to get out of prison life for a couple of hours.

After the show we ran a Q and A, spoke to the prisoners, and signed their copies of the play, which were kept carefully and in pristine condition. We were thanked a lot and were reminded how important it was to them that we had come. It was a profound experience. I have thought about it a lot since. And will think about it a lot, probably throughout my life. Of course, I’m sure some men in that prison have done very bad things and some might even show little to no remorse; but the people we met seemed so normal. Perhaps, a fit of anger, a tragedy, a tough, tough life, forces someone to do something rash, they get caught and that’s it: prison. And then once you’ve been to prison, done your time and get released, is it easy to establish a normal life? I don’t know, but the experience made me think. The walls we put up are built on sand.