Interview with Colorado Shakespeare Festival
I met with Dr. Amanda Giguere, Director of Outreach of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival of the University of Colorado Boulder. We discuss their nationally recognized Violence Prevention Program that tours to schools, what their upcoming season looks like, and more. (More interviews here.)
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Website: Colorado Shakespeare Festival
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Twitter: @cupresents
Instagram: @coshakes @cupresents
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If you’d rather read the interview, a rough transcript is below.
Colorado Shakespeare Festival Interview
Michael Van Osch: Hey, it’s Michael Van Osch. Welcome to the HARK Journal, so glad you’re here. Thanks again for joining us. This is the next in our interview series and I’m talking to Amanda Giguere from Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Amanda, how are you?
Amanda Giguere: Welcome. I’m great, Michael, thanks so much for having me.
Michael Van Osch: Thanks for doing this. We appreciate it. How are things out in Colorado these days? I know you’re working from home as a professor. Tell us a little bit about what’s going on.
Amanda Giguere: Yeah, Colorado. Well, it’s raining today, which never happens. It’s in Colorado. So you caught me on a rare day. We might even get the snow a little bit later, but yeah, I’ve been working from home.
Over a year and gearing up to head back to the theater, back to campus in just a couple of weeks, we’re going to have actors arriving and starting to stage and outdoor only seasons. So it’s going to be a nice return to our home. Sure.
Michael Van Osch: And I do want to hear more about that and a few other things that we’ve talked about offline here but let me introduce people to you a little more formally with your bio here.
I want to read some of the highlights. You’ve done so much. It’s so You joined the Colorado Shakespeare Festival as a grad student, and then became a full-time member back in 2011. You received your ma and PhD in theater, history, and criticism from the University of Colorado Boulder. And I’ve taught undergrad courses there.
And at other universities, And your book, the plays of Yasmina Reza have on the English and American stage was published in 2010. Congrats there. You did your undergrad and grad work at Trinity college in Connecticut, in theater and French, and taught in Hong Kong for two years. Wow. Love that. And you’ve worked with a lot of theaters, obviously, just to name a few here, curious theater, bolder ensemble theater company, rebel Shakespeare company, North shore music, theater, Cleveland Playhouse, and your research and work in developing.
The Colorado Shakespeare festival’s Shakespeare in schools tour all surrounding around the Shakespeare and violence prevention program. Has been nationally recognized. And I want to talk about that. And before we get into that program, tell us a little bit about the history of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, if you can, and kind of how long it’s been going and those sorts of cool details.
Amanda Giguere: Yeah, sure. So, the Colorado Shakespeare festival I’ve been working with CSF in some capacity for since 2004, which I can’t do the math right now in my head, but I, I think it’s a lot of time, many years Yeah. So, Colorado Shakespeare festival is the second oldest Shakespeare festival in the country.
Second, only to Ashlyn. So, Oregon is the oldest. We were founded in 1958 and now I’m like questioning my dates here, but yes, 1958. So, this is. 63rd or 64th season. It gets a little tricky to count when we’ve taken the summer of 20, 20 off. So, we’re going to have to face that question, but yeah, we were founded at the university of Colorado initially as part of the English department.
And then sort of, I think maybe like many other theater companies evolved. We then got adopted by the theater department and now we’re our own professional entity housed at the university of Colorado Boulder. So., We get word. Really the benefits of, of both worlds and that we’re sort of get to run like an independent theater company.
And yet we’re part of this glorious large institution where we have access to some cool research that’s being done. So that definitely relates to the violence prevention work. But, yeah, and I do want to shout out, I love that your bio, your intro includes a reference to the rebel Shakespeare company.
Cause I just want to shout out to that group. That is actually the company where I started performing as a kid. Oh wow. Doing Shakespeare, I think at age 10 or 11. And then I went on to direct for them and I just, I think that kind of work is so cool to be introducing kids to Shakespeare in a.
It’s the fun way. And that your first encounter with Shakespeare can be through performance. I think that is so formative. So, it’s definitely because of that group that I am now doing the work I’m doing.
Michael Van Osch: Fantastic. And I understand that you have classes and summer camps and that sort of thing there
Amanda Giguere: as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This year is a little, a little wonky, so it’s not our typical year, but yeah, usually we run a program called camp Shakespeare, which is a three-to-four-week performance series and kids end up performing on our beautiful outdoor stage or beautiful amphitheater at the same stage where our professionals perform.
And then we run a program called Shakespeare sprites for kids ages six to nine. So yeah, I, I, I try to you know, I try to have a lot of opportunities for kids to get up on their feet and start doing these plays as opposed to, you know, reading it, reading it on the page,
Michael Van Osch: for sure. For sure. And I, I don’t think I mentioned your, your formal title there as director
Amanda Giguere: of it.
Yeah. I’m director of outreach at CSF.
Michael Van Osch: Yep. Right. Oh, one question on that. On the, on the children, getting children and kids and teens getting involved in Shakespeare early, what, what do you feel like it really brings to their life and their development?
Amanda Giguere: I think it does a few things. I think one that’s, that’s important is it teaches an appreciation of language and that we can use language to put our thoughts into words and that, and I think that’s really very critical for, for maybe people of all ages, but especially for kids to learn these big emotions that I feel and these big experiences I have.
I can focus them on language and language can help cope with the difficult things that I might be experiencing or the fun things I might be experiencing. But that language is a, is a way of connecting with other people. I think that’s something Shakespeare does well. But then I think the other cool thing about Shakespeare is that I think it teaches us to be present and to put, you know, texts that might be 400-year-old.
Well, 400 years old - into the present moment and bring it to life at this moment in your body, like you. There’s something very powerful about that sort of teaching us to breathe and accept the given circumstances and to, to, to make this moment that was written long ago, come alive right now. I think that’s one, that’s sort of the magic of Shakespeare that it just is steeped in presence if it’s done well.
Michael Van Osch:
Yeah. Yeah. And I kind of get the feeling. I’m not a parent, but you know, if you have a child that is maybe interested in theater or in some of it like this. I wonder as a parent if you might be thinking, especially if you’re not a Shakespeare fan or didn’t understand it yourself so much whether or not a child could handle it.
Amanda Giguere: Yeah. You know, it’s funny, that’s something I hear from only from adults only for adults that fear of like, yeah, will they get it? Will they. Yeah, I think there’s an, and to be fair, I think Shakespeare is complicated. There’s a lot going on. And I do get those questions a lot from teachers and from, parents you know, is this too hard for my kids?
Never do I get those questions from kids? Because I think there’s something about particularly really young kids. So, like our six-year-olds tackling Shakespeare, they have such openness to language that I think Shakespeare himself probably had, you know, language. Was this thing that you can mess around with.
And, and when I work with kids doing Shakespeare, I, I tell them these plays are not sacred. These plays are not. You know, untouchable think of the plays as like Play-Doh or like a tool that you can get dirty with and mess around with, and it’s not going to break and it’s going to be fine. You might get a little messy and you have a little clean-up too, but yeah, that, that idea that it’s for you, it’s, it’s a tool for you.
Whereas I think adults often feel they must be a little bit delicate and respectful of the plays, I think.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah. Yeah. And you got to love the way young people don’t have all the preconceived notions that we do as adults and just dive into things. Just to me. Yeah. One, it probably gotta be one of the best ways to experience Shakespeare because I didn’t experience it until high school
Amanda Giguere: and, you know yeah.
If you don’t know to be afraid of it, then you can really start to connect to it. But yeah, if we, if we walk into a situation like, Oh, this is the world’s greatest playwright, nothing good will come up. That that was so approaching it as like these plays are here for me. I’m gonna. I’m going to experiment with them.
And I, you know, we do a program called the Willpower Festival where we have this year, it’s virtual, but usually, we have kids fourth and fifth grade performing Shakespeare. And unlike the camp, Shakespeare kids, these are kids who have not signed up to do Shakespeare. This is like their teacher is doing it.
And so, I love working with these kids because they’re sort of like, I don’t know who this guy is, but by the end of it, the thing they always emphasize with them and the thing that they reflect to us in post-show post-program surveys is like, I didn’t know that I could do this thing Shakespeare. I didn’t know I could do it.
And, not hard. And so, I think that’s an important takeaway that if you can, you know if you can approach these 400-year-old plays and make sense of them today and bring meaning to them today, your kind of can do anything. So, I think a lot of, for me, this working with kids and Shakespeare is not about training the next generation of Shakespeare Shakespearian actors.
Yup for professional actors in any way. Although some kids do go that route. I think it’s more about equipping them, with self-confidence and knowing, you know, I can use language, I can do hard things. I can bring meaning to this old text and make it feel present through my body and my experiences.
So, I think that’s one of the biggest benefits.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah. Yeah, that’s wonderful. Absolutely. And you mentioned when we started off that you were as a, as a company, as a festival, looking forward to doing a getting back on stage this summer. Tell us briefly what does, what does a normal summer looked like before COVID happened?
And then what are you guys going to be
Amanda Giguere: doing this summer? So typically, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival produces four full productions each summer two in our outdoor amphitheater, which is a 1000 seat stone amphitheater. It’s a beautiful space called the Mary Rippon outdoor theater. And then we are often running at the same time to indoor shows in our 400 seat theaters.
So that’s usually, typically our season is maybe three Shakespeare’s, one non-Shakespeare. And then at the end of the summer, we do something called, an original practices production just sort of an experiment looking at replicating Shakespeare’s rehearsal practices. To the extent possible within our company.
So that’s usually what our season looks like. This year we are sticking to an outdoor only season. We’re rehearsing everything outdoors and we’re limiting our productions to just the two outdoor productions that we had planned for 2020. So that is Mary Zimmerman’s, the Odyssey. Her adaptation is wonderful, and we’re excited to stage that.
And then A Midsummer Night’s Dream. So. If not like a feel-good drama. I mean, I think Midsummer is kind of a feel good. You know, like let’s get back to theater. I think it’s an homage to theater-making. And then the Odyssey, you know, staging the Western cannon’s oldest story that we have. I think it’s going to be really, just a great reminder of why we come together, why it’s important to gather in public spaces and tell stories.
Are our theaters are not going to be full this summer. We’re, we’re capping our audience sizes and audiences will be spaced out and mask. But yeah, it’s going to be, I keep calling it the season of sweaty Shakespeare because our whole company is rehearsing outdoors. Colorado gets really hot. But yeah, I think it’s going to be interesting return to theater.
I, everyone I know is really, excited about it. So.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah. That’s exactly what I hear too. And I, and I think the folks that do come out and will be so enthusiastic and so supportive. Yeah. Productions all over, all over because everybody’s
Amanda Giguere: ready. We’re hungry for it.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I really want to touch on a special program that you run, that you’re the head of and it’s called, let me just make sure I get it right here.
Shakespeare and Violence Prevention Program. So, the CSF Shakespeare in schools, tour Shakespeare and violence prevention programs. So, tell us about that. What the details are. It sounds very good.
Amanda Giguere: Yeah. It’s you know, I wish it was not so relevant. I wish we could do something that did not have to do with violence prevention, but the more we’ve been working on this program, we’ve been running it for about 11 years now, 10 years.
Yeah, this is a project that we started back in 2011. We were preparing to tour a production of Twelfth Night to local schools. And at the time we were reading a lot in the news about bullying and bullying was, was getting to be such a prominent problem that even then, there was a new term coined, a bully-cide where someone is targeted repeatedly and repeatedly and ends up dying by suicide because of the escalating bullying. So, there were a couple of high-profile cases. And so, my coworkers and I were just thinking, we recognize that it’s, it’s valuable to tour a Shakespeare play to schools, to let kids see Shakespeare in performance, but is there something else that we could do and try to tap into some other conversations that are happening in schools and how can we, you know, use Shakespeare to address a current issue. And so, a colleague at the university connected me with the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence which I didn’t know about.
I, we were sort of like in our own little theater silo, making our little Shakespeare plays, and right down the street from our office is a world-renowned research center, studying violence trends, particularly violence trends in schools. And so, we connected with them. And I was just suggesting I was, you know, coming into this meeting thinking, well, maybe they’ll give me a book to read about bullying or an article or something like that.
And they said, Oh, we want to partner with you. This sounds like an interesting way to engage important conversations in schools. And so, since that time we’ve been touring Shakespeare plays to Colorado schools that are aligned with all the violence prevention research that our team and the center are running.
And it’s amazing. I mean, it’s almost like Shakespeare had a background in public health and kind of knew just intuitively the things that make violence happen and what violence does to a community. And so, we just keep finding that these plays are, well certain plays we taught, we don’t tour all the, all the plays, but some of these plays really speak to what we now know about violence trends and violence patterns.
And so, it’s just been eye-opening for me to who I’ve been living and breathing all of these. Plays my whole life now to see these plays through the lens of violence prevention researcher and look at, Oh, well, there’s a risk factor for violence and Oh, look, Romeo is not getting any sleep. And we know that lack of sleep really leads to poor decisions.
And so, it’s just been interesting. Not that - I don’t think Shakespeare’s plays, teach us how to have less violent lives. I think if anything, they give us a lot of examples about how people mistreat one another and how the cycle of violence operates, and kind of what it does to a community.
So anyway, that’s sort of maybe more in-depth than, than you need, but that’s great, but we’ve been, you know, it’s, it’s. The model of it is basically when you tour a Shakespeare play, perform it for a group of, of students. And then after the performance, our actors gather in smaller breakouts and they guide students through a moment from the play.
So, let’s say it’s you know Romeo and Tybalt and Mercutio in their fight scene. So, in modern-day language, they’ll unpack that moment with the kids. And they’ll invite the kids to step in as themselves. So not a fictional character from a Shakespeare play, but if you were to witness something like this in your community, what action could you take to prevent the harm?
Which doesn’t always mean directly stepping in, because one important. Part of this is always keeping yourself safe, but we just basically use the classroom workshop space after watching the play to give kids the chance to practice acting as upstanders. That’s the term that we use, but someone who sort of takes action to help others and you know, we all think we would like to think that we would help when we see people being mistreated.
But it’s not that easy, especially if we haven’t practiced. And so, the idea is we just give kids a space to practice their own solutions and strategies that they, they already have. And, and I think the important thing to recognize is our, our teaching artists are not going in team teaching kids how to prevent violence because that’s sort of an impossible, there’s no, there’s no one solution.
And so instead it’s like, what’s what do you want to try right now? Knowing that there is no perfect solution. There are just let’s. Let’s try, let’s see if this works. So yeah, I love this program. It really, to me opens the complexity of how much Shakespeare can do and how much Shakespeare can serve our time.
So right now, we’re getting ready to tour Julius Caesar to middle and high schools, because there’s so much to think about in terms of when we know a planned attack is happening. We’re tutoring Twelfth Night again, to elementary schools. So, I’m excited about that. Wow.
Michael Van Osch: Absolutely. And I assume that you’ve had some feedback from teachers about this. What are some of the things that you’ve heard over the years about this program? I mean, it obviously makes a difference.
Amanda Giguere: It does. I mean, it’s hard to measure, right?
It’s but so most of our feedback, the feedback that really sticks with me is anecdotal like, “wow, this kid who never participates in class. Got up on stage with your actor and participated in the role-play and I’ve, I’m just amazed that my, the student came to life in that way”. And so, I think that’s one part of it is that this is a different mode of learning and it’s something that’s, that’s not very common in schools.
But the thing that really that a lot of teachers comment on is. How relevant this is and how it’s giving kids tools to then refer to so like inter even introducing the term upstander and some schools have their own terms, like maybe allies or ways that they celebrate people who, who speak up on behalf of others.
But I love hearing from teachers when they tell us, “Oh, that term that you introduced, we’re using it all the time in our classroom”. And so that’s where I think the program can be really powerful if we’re able to sort of latch onto what they’re already doing. And then this kind of work gets followed up on later.
But the thing we often hear from kids is, “Oh, that was really funny. I didn’t know. Shakespeare was funny”. So that’s another, you know, sort of eye-opening thing that, cause we, we know that Shakespeare is not like you know, dry and formal. We know that Shakespeare is dirty and funny and yeah, and for us, so but something that we’ve done.
Six years ago, we started integrating Spanish speaking and characters to the play. And we have a lot of Spanish speaking families in Colorado. And so that was one we’ve gotten a lot of good feedback regarding that decision and just kind of what it does to particularly the students in the audience who, who primarily speak Spanish at home with their families.
They’re suddenly the experts and they’re Non-Spanish speaking, friends are turning to them and like, “what did they say? Can you translate for me?” So that’s been kind of cool. Yeah, I mean we’re learning so much one day we’ll get through the whole cannon with this project. Cause I think Shakespeare just understood violence and just what it means.
So, I think probably every play deals with violence in some, on some level.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah, absolutely. A total reflection of society, regardless of what year it is.
Amanda Giguere: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe not Titus, maybe I won’t tour Titus to schools. That might be a little too much.
Michael Van Osch: Right. I hear ya. I hear ya. Exactly. So obviously this, this program is going well and it’s, it’s moving forward and, and you know, the festivals moving forward this summer, especially with camp as well.
So where do you see the organization going in the next five to 10 years? I mean, that may be hard to answer, but I mean, it’s, it’s just, you’re doing such good work. How do you, or how would you like to see it move forward?
Amanda Giguere: That’s well, thank you. That’s very kind. And I mean, I can tell you the answer that I would have had prior to the pandemic, and I don’t know if this changes things, but I’m in charge of all the education programs.
And about three years ago, we set a goal to perform Shakespeare in every Colorado County by I think, 2028. So the pandemic kind of threw a wrench in that, but maybe not. Then, the pandemic has forced us, to get a little creative with film and filming our shows on, on our outdoor stage and sharing them that way.
But that’s the thing that I think Colorado Shakespeare festival, at least our education programs, I really want to think about. We are located in Boulder, Colorado on the traditional lands of the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Ute nations. And Boulder is one part of Colorado. And we have this beautiful theater in Boulder, but we are the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.
And so that was part of the mission in terms of how can we make sure that we are sharing? We are creating programming that can reach. Our state and not just the people who can travel to Boulder. So that, I think in some capacity we’ll keep trying to reach every County. It may be with film it, maybe not.
But for me, that’s, that’s the direction I want to move in is ensuring that every kid that wants to see a Shakespeare play can see a Shakespeare play. Because I know that’s the best way to do encounter Shakespeare. I just know it watching it on stage performed by live actors. We were really working on our, our diversity and ensuring that our acting company looks like kids in the audience.
And so that we can see ourselves in the play. So that might be, you know, a young girl in the audience seeing, Oh, Hamlet can be played by a woman and I can see myself in Hamlet shoes or you know, casting a Latinx actor in the role of Brutus, let’s say, and, and a Latinx student in the audience might say, Oh, I can see myself in that.
So that’s, I think where, you know, those are the things we’re thinking about now and how to root out the parts of Shakespeare that are maybe less helpful to us right now. And to really question these plays. And if there are, if there are parts of the plays that don’t speak to this present moment, well, do we need to stage that play right now?
So, I think just like all Shakespeare companies are probably having those same conversations, but for us, it’s always about. Looking at who we are right now. And what is this word world that we’re in? And Shakespeare is always going to be secondary to the us right now. So that, I think that’s the cool thing about these places that they have so many meanings, depending on the when and then, and the who that we’re talking about. I think that was maybe a very,
Michael Van Osch: No, it’s absolutely right on for me because too, I mean, we’ve all realized, especially in the last year and a half, that who we are is not who we thought we are. It’s a much bigger we, and much more diverse.
We, and the best thing we can do is start to, to address that.
Amanda Giguere: Yeah. And I think the, you know, what, what really, I find so important about these plays is that there are so many competing perspectives in a Shakespeare play. There are, you know, and Shakespeare was just so good at getting into the brains of so many different people.
And I think that’s a healthy exercise for us today to just, you know, put myself in that people. Shoes or in that person’s brain and then that person’s brain in that person’s brain. So, I think, yeah, kind of unpacking a Shakespeare play can really help us address these present moments that we’re in
Michael Van Osch: well said.
Well said thank you. Yes. Well, thank you so much for all of this. It’s been great. We have the final question that I ask everybody that I talked to and I’ll lay it on you now. If Shakespeare was on this call with us. And you got to ask him one question. What would you want to ask him?
Amanda Giguere: What’s your advice for productivity, right? What’s your writing practice? I guess I feel like you’ve had a lot done.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah.
Amanda Giguere: But maybe I don’t want to know. I mean, it was probably like I locked myself in a room with a gallon of ale or something, but yeah, I’d want to know kind of what’s his writing practice.
I love it. How does he structure his writing time? I guess? Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. That’s a great question.
Michael Van Osch: Well, it’s not always easy, but the answers we get are phenomenal across the board. Someday I need to come pack them all and probably publish it because it’s been great.
Amanda Giguere: Yeah. That’s wonderful.
Michael Van Osch: Yeah. Well, we appreciate you taking your time, Amanda here. You guys have done so much great work over the last number of years and congrats on the Violence Prevention Program as well. Best of luck with that going on and. I’ll put it in the show notes, but what’s your website very quickly. So, people listening, convictions,
Amanda Giguere: Coloradoshakes.org.
Michael Van Osch: Okay. Director of outreach. Amanda’s Giguere, did I get it right?
Amanda Giguere: You got it right this time.
Michael Van Osch: Thanks so much for joining us. Stay on the line here, but anyway, thanks. And thanks for being a Hark Journal subscriber.
Amanda Giguere: We appreciate your support too. I love it. I think everyone should be a subscriber - subscribe now.
Michael Van Osch: Thanks. Thanks so much, Amanda. We’ll talk to you soon. Take care.
Amanda Giguere: Bye.
