Live Oak drama students bound for Shakespeare’s homeland
Thirteen Live Oak High School drama students are preparing for
the educational adventure of their young lives
– a post-Christmas trip to London, the cradle of
English-language theater, to attend stage plays and soak up
Elizabethan culture.
Live Oak drama students bound for Shakespeare’s homeland
Thirteen Live Oak High School drama students are preparing for the educational adventure of their young lives – a post-Christmas trip to London, the cradle of English-language theater, to attend stage plays and soak up Elizabethan culture.
Denied the trip last year when school district trustees refused to authorize travel following the events of Sept. 11, the young thespians can hardly wait.
“I’m aching to go back,” said senior Lacey McGee, who a couple of years ago took the opportunity to tour London during an 11-hour layover on a trip to Kenya. “Theater is my life. I’ve been acting, singing and dancing since I was 4 years old.”
Jessica Seagren loves theater, too, but doubts that she has the talent to make a living as a stage or screen actress.
“The trip gives us the chance to visit places we’ve never been and do thing we’ve never done, like going backstage,” said Jessica, who believes her experience around horses since she was 2 years old makes her more likely to become an equine veterinarian than an actress.
Teacher Bill Klipstine, who’s been taking students to London for at least a decade, describes the visit as an eye-opener.
“This is a chance to visit the roots of Western theater, take in professional stage productions and see things that most students only read about,” said Klipstine, who has taught drama and ceramics at Live Oak since 1985. He was at the district’s Britton Middle School for nine years preceding that.
Among the four stage productions on the students’ schedule are Les Miz, the musical about the French Revolution, and Bombay Dreams, the latest production of Andrew Lloyd Webber, who dominated the London stage for 20 years with Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Starlight Express.
Bombay Dreams, the story of a boy from the slums who wants to become a Hollywood star and falls in love with the daughter of a movie magnate in the process, is big in London now, Klipstine said.
In keeping with the purpose of their trip, the Live Oak students will visit the modern version of the Globe Theater, which was so closely associated with William Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a shareholder in the venture, an actor and one of the main contributors of works for the stage company.
Little is known about the structure of the original Globe, which opened in 1599 and burned to the ground in 1613 during a production of Shakespeare’s play Henry VIII. It was immediately rebuilt, but was closed by the Puritans in 1642. The modern Globe opened in 1997 about 200 yards from the site of the original.
The students will pay a visit to Stratford-on-Avon to see the grave of The Bard. They’ll also see the Rosetta Stone, the Magna Carta, the Guttenburg Bible and visit Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the tombs of poets and monarchs, including Elizabeth I.
“It will be a very long seven days,” Klipstine said. “We’ll be up at 7 a.m. and out until 10 or 11p.m. since it’ll be theater almost every night.”
The theatrical aspects of the trip aren’t the only reasons for going, according to a couple members of the entourage.
Senior Ronni Peterson-Chiusano is looking forward to shopping for English shoes as well.
“I’ve been in drama since I was a sophomore. I’m very dramatic,” Ronni said with just enough camp to bring on put-downs from her co-travelers.
Junior Jackie Mazzarella has another reason, too.
“I just love English culture – the accent, the vocabulary, modern British fashion, even the climate – and I can’t wait to hear someone say ‘bugger,”’ Jackie said.
Dione Jernigan, a senior, is particularly anxious to see London. She lost out when last year’s trip was cancelled.
“I want to see historical sites as well as the stage plays. I’ve never been outside the United States,” Dionne said, adding “I don’t need a foreign language to communicate, either.”’
Alicia Villarruel is waiting to see Les Miz because she is the only member of a circle of friends who hasn’t seen the musical, now in its 16th year on Broadway.
“This is my first trip outside the United States, too,” Alicia said, but then added, “Well, I’ve been to Mexico several times.”
Klipstine’s drama classes are especially popular now that high school graduates need a year of performing arts to enroll in either the University of California or the California State University systems.
Fine arts are making a comeback, Klipstine said.
“Fine arts are part of life. Classical education dealt with the three Rs, but it also included dramatic arts as well as music, dance and elocution,” Klipstine said.
It’s been documented, Klipstine said, that students with performing arts experience outshine others on SAT scores.
Numerous former drama students at Live Oak have distinguished themselves in the performing arts, Klipstine said. He recalled directors of television soap operas, theater teachers, writers for Saturday Night Live and a stand-up comic.
Klipstine’s immersion in the Elizabethan era is reinforced by participating in the Society for Creative Anachronism, an international living-history organization centered around Medieval culture. The hierarchy includes kingdoms, baronies (the local barony runs from San Jose to the San Luis Obispo County line and includes Monterey and Santa Cruz counties) and local cantons.
Members of cantons offer educational programs for schools and Scout groups.
Klipstine’s students become steeped in the dramatic arts, offering two stage productions a year – a musical in the spring, a non-musical in the fall. They also produce five student-directed works each year.
Just last week, drama students presented Neil Simon’s Fools, the story of a village liberated from a spell through love, and a special version of A Christmas Carol. The shows ran Thursday through Saturday.
Members of the traveling group are scheduled for a pre-departure briefing during which they’ll go over the theatrical works they’ll see, have a chance to ask questions and jot down a number of Web addresses from which to glean further information.
In addition to Alicia, Ronni, Jackie, Dionne, Jessica and Lacey, students making the trip are Frederick Ballo, Bethany Biskey, Betty Burns, Brian Corral, Lisa DeLeeau, Christopher Ramme and Kelly Wiggins. They’ll be gone from Dec. 26 to Jan. 2.
