Over the years since its founding, Shakespeare For Our Children has been fortunate to see many young actors inhabit many parts. Yet with each new class of students – filled with fresh ideas and possibilities – there is still the trace of the past performers who brought their own singular approach to a given role. There are perennial favorites from class to class, such as Hamlet, Puck, and Juliet; but then there have also been more surprising choices, like Henry V. In every single case, the student made the role their own.
From videotapes to cell phones, various technologies have preserved these beloved performances. But what truly holds the spirit of each young actor are the words themselves – words that echo with the voices of thespians across the centuries. Such a phenomenon recalls one of Shakespeare’s sonnets: “Not marble nor the gilded monuments / Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme / But you shall shine more bright in these contents / Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.”
Each new group of SFOC students will graduate and share their love of Shakespeare with the next generation; every role will find a different interpreter. What remains a constant, though, are the words that will be spoken – given new life even as they gesture to what has come before. They are, as Shakespeare wrote in that sonnet, “the living record […] of memory.”
