AFS students traveled to the American Shakespeare Center (ASC) in Staunton, VA November 16-18. Trip leader Megan Bellwoar Hollinger shared with This Week that the group participated in two different workshops on acting Shakespeare’s text, and saw three shows in two days including an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, and Shakespeare’s Richard III and As You Like It.

The American Shakespeare Center mission is to create the experience of Elizabethan audiences by recreating the conditions of 16th and 17th century theatre. The center is housed in a reproduction of the Blackfriars Theatre, the London stage house where Shakespeare’s company would have performed. The group learned about the practices Shakespeare’s actors used in rehearsing his plays, and what theatre was like in Elizabethan times. The students who made the trip to Virginia include:
Devyn Costello-Henderson
Halle Jacobson
Emma Cameron
Nick Cideciyan
Naandi Jamison
Katie Brady-Gold
Abi Lomas
Kayla Brown
Clay Lewis
Garrett Weinstock
Sophie Pugh
Georgie Wagner