hese famous lines from the love-sick Duke of Illyria begin Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which will be produced this year during Salamander Theatre for Young Audiences' summer camp.
Held at the Billings Estate Museum, Simply Shakespeare (the name of the camp) is enjoying such success in its fifth year that there are two sessions this first summer of the new millennium!
Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare's jolliest plays, is said to have been written for a celebration at Queen Elizabeth's court on the twelfth night of Christmas (January 5). With secret identities, ship-wrecked and rescued siblings and a strong Commedia dell'arte theme, the play is a cunning masterpiece of trickery, humour, misplaced courtship and punctured pomposity.
The twenty young actors in the camp present a script that has been edited by Salamander Theatre's Eleanor Crowder to provide everyone with a chance to shine, enough depth to challenge them and a rollicking good play!
This is not new ground for Salamander Theatre for Young Audiences, Ottawa's only theatre for young audiences company, Salamander has been working with children and teens since 1993. The company is currently touring three shows throughout Ontario - A World of Stories, Excalibur and Beowulf - performing in front of 30,000 children annually.
Schools around Ottawa regularly experience Salamander Theatre's presence with workshops such as Playmaking & Jouons Ensembles (theatre basics), Hero Talk (theatrically examining themes of courage and honour) and Calling The Shots (mixed media).
One of the more popular in-school workshops for the company is Speaking Shakespeare, which became the inspiration for the Simply Shakespeare summer camp five years ago. The summer camps have produced several of Shakespeare's beloved plays, including All's Well That Ends Well, Henry V and Winter's Tale.
This year, the production is Twelfth Night: Or, What You Will (Shakespeare's own title and subtitle). The campers will present their talents the way Elizabethan touring companies might have - under a huge tree with the audience gathered around! That huge tree lives at the Billings Estate Museum where the camp takes place.
Campers have access to the grounds of the Estate, as well as a few of the outer buildings. As well as the benefits of plenty of space in which to rehearse, campers come to appreciate and practice the essentially physical nature of Shakespearian comedy: the large gestures and broad humour inherited from the Commedia dell'arte form.
Salamander Theatre keeps enrollment at a maximum of twenty campers per session. Two sessions of Simply Shakespeare are planned for this summer: session one from July 4-21 and session two from July 24-August 11. Information is available at Salamander Theatre for Young Audiences. Contact Linna Rowlatt at 569-5629.
There are few other opportunities for young people between the ages of 10-16 to experience Shakespearian theatre in the way Salamander Theatre for Young Audiences is offering it!