For the week of May 14 - 20, 2003

New company
teaches Shakespeare
this summer

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By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer

Kimberly White, a Seattle actress and director, is one of the co-founders of Sun Valley Shakespeare Festival, which has produced theatrical extravaganzas every summer for the past three years in the Forest Service Park in Ketchum.

This year, in a wholly new and unconnected project, her newest venture, Shakespeare Sun Valley, is offering a Summer Performance Program for teens, 14- to 18, culminating in a production of William Shakespeare’s "Romeo and Juliet," July 25 and 26, at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Ketchum.

The workshop runs from July 7 through July 26, Monday through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., also at St. Thomas.

"There will also be a middle school age class for one week, working on Shakespeare text. They’ll learn stage fighting, and do scenes of their own liking," White said.

A weekend mask class is a repeat from last year.

"This is a sophisticated process of making masks that includes plaster, paper maché, design and building your own mask. Then you learn to perform in it," White said.

Last year, under the Sun Valley Shakespeare Festival’s umbrella, White offered three teen workshops in stage fighting, masks and Shakespeare Alive, held at St. Thomas.

The new Shakespeare Sun Valley is made up of White, Edgar Landa, Peter and Phin Whitrock, all actors and directors who have worked with Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox, Mass.

"Our mission statement is to inspire joy and confidence in the power, beauty and necessity in the language through the work of William Shakespeare," White said.

"It fits in with the St. Thomas Playhouse education and theatre mission," White said. "Anna Johnson and the Rev. Brian Baker like and believe in our program and offered us the space."

Last year, after the workshops were held people expressed interest in having more Shakespeare in the schools, White said.

"They wanted us to cultivate a relationship with the high school and middle school. This spring we did workshops at both schools."

Her partners, the Whitrock father and son have appeared in Sun Valley Shakespeare Festivals productions of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" and in "Taming of the Shrew."

Edgar Landa is a theatrical fight instructor and choreographer who lives in L.A. He worked for 10 years in the Education Program with Shakespeare & Co.

Besides her work her in Sun Valley and with Shakepspeare & Co., White was with Young Shakespeare in Seattle for eight years.

"When we went to the WRMS some of the kids had seen "The Tempest." It got them more excited about doing Shakespeare. For many, it was the first time they’d seen Shakespeare," White said about the evolution of the new company. "We simply grew out of Sun Valley Shakespeare Festival. We think and hope that what we do supports each other and enhances the community. We’re totally psyched. We have all kinds of possibilities."

Pursuing a multicultural agenda is one of those possiblities in part because Landa is fluent in Spanish and English. "We’re interested in Romeo & Juliet with a Hispanic and Anglo theme," White said.

Of course it’s been done before in "West Side Story," and very successfully, too.

White intends on making the Celebration of the Day of the Dead the party scene where Romeo meets Juliet for the first time.

After the performance of Romeo and Juliet, beginning on July 31 for a five-day run, there will also be a short 60-minute performance by Shakespeare Sun Valley called "Lunatics, Lovers and Poets," directed by Ed Call. A Seattle actor and director and a mentor of White’s, he is considered a specialist in Shakespeare. It will be a collage of scenes and monologues, with Peter and Phin Whitrock, Eric Ray Anderson, and another actor possibly from the Wood River Valley.

"All male and zany," White said.

The venue has yet to be announced.

 

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