BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News
Oct. 28, 2009
With the wrap called and curtains closed on a worldwide Shakespeare festival, students in Mexico's bilingual private schools are setting the stage for a second round of events.
For the third consecutive year, secondary schools around Mexico City last weekend performed abbreviated versions of the Bard's most celebrated plays. Directors, teachers and students are now gearing up for a round of individual recitals at the high-school level, a process that kicks off in November and wraps up in March next year.
"Shakespeare is generally acknowledged as being the greatest writer in the English language, but his plays were never meant to be read - ever," said Stuart Cox, coordinator of the Shakespeare Project with The Anglo Mexican Foundation and artistic director of the Celebrating Cultures theater company.
"His plays were always meant for acting, and the best way to understand the play is not to read it, but to see it performed, or to perform in it yourself," he added.
Cox said the Shakespeare Project was founded in Mexico in 2001, a year after the main British festival got its start. Since then, the project each year has increasingly attracted more schools in its monologue competition and collective shows.
Around 200 students in Mexico recited monologues or sonnets last year. This year, 22 schools around the country will take part, with 11 finalists emerging for the final rounds in the spring.
Internationally, the festival of plays in October counted the participation of students in around 70 other countries, whose events took place on the same day to coincide with performances in the United Kingdom.
Participating schools in Mexico included the Lancaster School in Tlalpan, which performed "Macbeth," and the Greengates School in Colonia Lomas Verdes, which performed "The Tempest." The Mount Sinai Hebrew School in Colonia Roma performed "Twelfth Night," and the Las Rosas School in the Purísima Ticomán neighborhood put on "The Winter's Tale."
Two Cuernavaca schools, the Marymount School and Churchill College, in November will perform "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Richard III," respectively.
Cox explained that most of the students in Mexico speak English only as their second language, which he said adds a "fresh and innocent" perspective to Shakespeare's works.
John Kelly, lead English teacher at Lancaster, said that the standard for the performances has risen over the years, elevating the prestige of the festival and recital among students and parents.
Kelly directed his school's performance last Friday at the Anglo's Antonio Caso campus in Colonia San Rafael.
"As a school, we feel that these events are our cultural livelihood...To be involved in the Shakespearean play is starting to be a point of social status amongst our students, and many parents are keen to see their children in these plays," he said, adding that the audience that night exceeded the theater's capacity.
Gerardo Coello, 15, said he was thrilled to be cast in the lead role of Macbeth.
"I love [Shakespeare's] language, and how his characters and settings are all about one issue: in "Macbeth," it's repentance; in "Othello," it's jealousy; and in "Hamlet, it's about indecision," he said at a dress rehearsal before the final performance.
María Guillán, who played Lady Macbeth, said she loved learning Shakespeare in school because of his character manipulation.
"I love the way he takes a character, which seems to be perfectly normal, but then he transforms it and totally degrades it. He knows a lot about the human mind and psychology, and he includes that in his plays," said the 15-year-old.
For more on Shakespeare International, visit www.ca.org.mx
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