Shakespeare Time

Every year, I take a select group of students on a week long field trip to the Shake- speare Festival. This year's plays were: Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Romeo and Juliet. We also saw three non-Shakespeare plays which were: Noises off!, Music Man, and The Glass Menagerie. Every year is fun, but a lot of work to keep track of the students and hold them accountable to what they should be doing. This year, however, was wonderful! I had a lot of fun and didn't feel like a babysitter.

Every year there is an actor that the girls fall in love with. This year, it was Elijah Alexander who played Oberon and Duke Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Richard

in Richard III. After one of his performances, the girls wanted to get a picture with him so badly, but he snuck out. One of my students saw him making his way through the crowd and like a

mother wanting the best for her child, I ran after him and asked him if he'd come back for a picture. He was the most gracious and genteel person. He not only came back for a picture, but he sat and chatted with my students for a short time. When the girls were getting pictures with this fine actor, I had to join in and get one too.

This year, the Shakespeare Festival was celebrating its 50th anniversary and to do so, they had many additional exhibits. One of the pieces they had on display was the first edition folio of Shakespeare's plays. This book is on

display in a museum in DC and to get it hear it had its own 1st class ticket and a chaperon under lock and key. This thing is priceless. When Shakespeare died, he had never made a collection of his works, so his performing company put together all of the plays they had done with William Shakespeare to make this particular book. If his players had not done this for him, I doubt we'd have his plays now. This was one of the best trips I've been on and the girls had so much fun. I think this will be a fond memory of theirs for years to come.