MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College presents its biennial Shakespeare production by the English department when “The Tempest” opens Friday, Oct. 29, at 8 p.m. in the Plumb-Fleming Studio Theatre of Armstrong Hall.
Performances continue Oct. 30 at 2 and 8 p.m. and Oct. 31 at 2 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults, $5 for students and seniors. Reserve tickets at (319) 895-4293.
The production’s guest director is Carey Upton, who helped found and was the resident director of The Shakespeare Project in Frederick, Md. He has directed professionally at Shakespeare & Company (Massachusetts), Actors Theatre of Louisville, Horse Cave Theatre (Kentucky) and the Richmond Shakespeare Festival (Virginia). He taught acting and directing for five years at the University of Maryland, College Park. Currently he is co-artistic director of Waging Theatre, a newly formed enterprise in Los Angeles.
Upton is actively involved in the Original Practices movement of producing Shakespeare. For Cornell’s production of “The Tempest,” the students examined how the play was originally performed in the early 17th century and how that practice can be used to bring the play to life for 21st-century audiences.
“The purpose of this exploration is not to create a museum reconstruction, but a piece that can breathe with new life in our time, in relationship with our community,” he says.
Most of the students involved in the production are enrolled in “Shakespeare I: Comedies and Romances” with Katy Stavreva, associate professor of English. Running the play in conjunction with a class was the idea of the late Stephen Lacey, an English professor who brought in as guest director Desmond Barrit, award-winning actor with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
“Stephen wanted to give his students the opportunity to study Shakespeare through the body as well as the mind,” Stavreva says.
Under Cornell’s One-Course-At-A-Time system, the class runs 3 1/2 weeks. The production cycle for “The Tempest,” largely overlapping with the class, is five weeks.
