Arts & Entertainment

Rising from the Ashes: Local Students Bring Shakespeare Back to the Park

Published 9 years ago9y ago • Bookmarks: 49

September 3, 2015

| by Zoe Kaplan |

“Let’s get back to basics. What more do we need for Shakespeare in the Park than Shakespeare and a park?”

Kristen Ippolito, former camper, counselor, and assistant director of YMCA Summer Theater, felt incomplete with a change the program brought to the summer 2015 schedule: performing a musical rather than Shakespeare. While she, along with the campers, happily embraced the switch in genre, it couldn’t be denied that something was missing.

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In June, Ippolito casually reached out to six campers, ones who had done as many as six past YMCA Summer Shakespeare performances. When she suggested doing more Shakespeare work, all responded with excitement despite their busy schedules: most of them were in the YMCA production of Les Misérables.

“Luckily, over the last 11 years, I’ve developed a very strong network of enthusiastic and talented actors, who were just as excited about getting to work on this troupe as I was,” Ippolito explained. Soon the group met to discuss their plans for the summer; while they couldn’t possibly learn a whole show, they could work on multiple scenes.

The group calls itself The Phoenix Shakespeare Company. William Shakespeare wrote, “When the bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix, / Her ashes new-create another heir /As great in admiration as herself.” Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the group believes it is rising from the end of YMCA Summer Shakespeare, and, hopefully, creating “another heir” by continuing to perform Shakespeare’s works.

Now made up of seven students, the troupe has performed a total of 14 scenes from five shows: As You Like It, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Twelfth Night, Henry IV Part I, and Much Ado About Nothing. Instead of doing a whole show, they focus on two characters from each and demonstrate the arc in their friendship as the show progresses. In As You Like It, the two main female characters, Rosalind and Celia, first have a scene expressing their happiness, then a scene filled with tension, and finally a last scene cementing their friendship and parallel weddings.

After performing at both the Philipse Manor Beach Club and the Tarrytown Farmer’s Market, the troupe’s performances have come to a close for this season. However, the members have already made future plans. While they enjoyed getting a taste for multiple shows this summer by doing only scenes, next summer they hope to expand their group and delve into one show. No decisions, however, are final yet.

“What I do know for certain is that, as we move forward, I want to find a balance between the collaborative and free nature of this year’s performance with the structure that a full play demands,” Ippolito said. “This is definitely a difficult task, but I’m confident that our team will rise to the occasion.”

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