So. Many. Lines.

As a Theatre major at the college it often seems that life is an endless cycle. I am forced to audition, consistently memorize lines, perform and then do the whole process over again. While I do love the process I must admit that it is very stressful at times. I have noticed that each play I do at W&M tends to get more complicated and I get even more exhausted.

Yesterday, I did my final performance as Lucentio in Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” and never have I been more exhausted. While I have done several plays before, this play was quite different. First, it was Shakespeare. At first it was extremely exciting to do Shakespeare. I feel that all actors should do Shakespeare once in their life and I was excited to finally have the opportunity to do so. But my excitement quickly subsided when I looked at the script. I realized that I had a huge amount of lines and that they were all in that old Shakespearean English. The older form of English made it nearly impossible to memorize lines quickly. I found myself memorizing the lines but attempting to add modern words and prepositions to make it seem more natural. Obviously, when I started to add in modern language it was clearly obvious and I often had to go back and re-memorize lines. This process was extremely tedious but when I finally got all my lines it was extremely rewarding.

A second reason why this play was different from others was the fact that it was entirely student run. My performance of “Taming” was part of a group called “Shakespeare in the Dark” which is a student run Shakespeare Company on campus. The fact that it was student run often made it difficult for all involved. For example, because “Taming” was not an official William and Mary Production we could not use much of the theater spaces on campus. We often had to rehearse in empty classrooms. We did eventually perform in a theater but we were only allowed to have it for a very short amount of time. This consistent change in rehearsal space often made it difficult to perform and we really had no place to store our costumes and props.

The third reason that this process was different was because of our rehearsal time. Because my cast members frequently had other commitments early in the evening all of our rehearsals were from 9-midnight. The time often made it impossible for me to get all of my homework done. I am also a government major and it became extremely difficult to read 75 pages of political theory at 2AM. In the last couple weeks of the play I had started to go to Wawa and buy a 24 ounce coffees just so I could stay up and finish all my work. All of my classes start at 9am so I had begun to live off 4-5 hours of sleep.

While all of this may seem negative, I assure that I would go back and do the whole experience in a heart beat. I had an absolute blast getting to put on a play with the few resources we had. Because we were all together my cast really developed a great bond. I was able to make some incredible new friends as well as strengthen old relationships. Also, performing in “Taming” was one of the most rewarding experiences I have had at W&M. I felt that even through all of the late hours, hot coffee, and line mistakes I had a great time and I was proud to show off what my cast and I had achieved.

Nathan Alston ’13