American Shakespeare Center Theatre Camp 2013 Information

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The American Shakespeare Center Theatre Camp offers two summer Shakespeare intensives for ages 13-18 (residential or day camp).  In each three-week session campers perform in an hour-long version of a Shakespeare play; participate in performance master classes (stage combat, dance, music, clowning); attend academic classes (theatre history, scansion/rhetoric, source study); and visit the Blackfriars Playhouse to watch the professional Resident and Touring Troupe actors rehearse and perform in our summer season of plays.

Campers at ASC Theatre Camp are taught by ASC scholars, professors from Mary Baldwin College’s MLitt/MFA in Shakespeare in Performance Program, and professional artists and educators from the acting troupes.  Our vibrant community of Shakespeare enthusiasts welcomes campers to a wonderful world of intense play – we hope you can join us.

Session 1: June 16 – July 7, 2013

• Pericles, by William Shakespeare: Prince Pericles sets out to see the world, but shipwrecks, famines, and villainous kings interrupt his travels. When his wife Thaisa appears to die at sea, he leaves their daughter Marina in the care of friends. Marina inherits her dad’s talent for attracting trouble, and has to escape assassination attempts and pirates before she can find her happy ending. One of Shakespeare’s late and co-authored romances, Pericles, Prince of Tyre combines chivalric adventure with themes of familial reunions.
• As You Like It, by William Shakespeare: When Rosalind’s usurping uncle banishes her from the court, she does what any self-respecting heroine would: disguises herself as a boy and heads for the forest. Accompanied by her cousin Celia and the clown Touchstone, Rosalind encounters silly shepherds, natural philosophers, and her own love, Orlando. Giddy and charming, As You Like It is Shakespeare’s classic tale of pastoral pleasures infused with as much gender-bending and romantic confusion as you could hope to find in an early modern comedy.
• The Wild Goose Chase, by John Fletcher: Marriage is a sport in beautiful Paris, and the lords and ladies of The Wild Goose Chase are playing for keeps. While beautiful Oriana pursues the disdainful Mirabel, his friends Belleur and Pinac try their luck with the heiresses Rosalura and Lillia-Bianca. Tricks and traps line the path to the altar in this madcap comedy.

Session 2: July 14 – August 4, 2013

• Richard II, by William Shakespeare: When an introspective king clinging to his divine right to rule puts too much faith and power in the hands of unworthy advisers, who then truly deserves to rule the realm? King Richard II finds out the hard way when Henry Bolingbroke challenges him, leading to a tug-of-war over the throne that will ripple through generations. The prelude to Shakespeare’s famous Henriad, Richard II is a rich history, stuffed with soaring rhetoric and devious politics.
• The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare: Despite the flock of suitors at Bianca’s door, her father Baptista will not allow her to marry before her elder sister, the ferociously feisty Katharina -- and the only man willing to take on the challenge is fortune-hunter Petruchio. A battle of wills between Kate and Petruchio turns into a lesson on life and an exercise in the roles we all play for each other. The Taming of the Shrew is a nuanced comedy that has challenged directors and actors for centuries.
• Volpone, by Ben Jonson: The wealthy Volpone plays tricks on his friends and neighbors, many of whom want to lay their hands on his fortune, while Volpone himself wants to lay hands on the beautiful Celia, wife of the merchant Corvino. He and his servant Mosca engage in a series of disguises and deceits, eventually landing them all in a Venetian courtroom to untangle the greed-spun web. This Jacobean city comedy mercilessly satirizes sins while dishing out laughs.

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