Unplugged

First of all, Hi I'm Jim Helsinger, Artistic Director for the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival. We are right now in a tremendous growth phase. I came on board as Artistic Director two years ago now after having been an Actor and Director with the company for five years. At that time, we were a spring festival that produced two plays in this spring along with a few ancillary programs such as an educational program called The Young Comp any and a few other things. Since that time we have expanded to a full nine month season.

We also added a brand new reading series called "Shakespeare Unplugged"--or as the actors like to call it "Shakespeare Unplugg-ed." What "Shakespeare Unplugged" is is once a month on a Monday night (the third Monday of the month) we read a Shakespeare play.

We get a group of actors together, we only rehearse it three times. we sit in a bunch of chairs, we perform it at the UCF Downtown complex--there's a lecture auditorium in there--we leave all the lights on . . . and we read it. We read a play for people. We cut it down, add some narration. We did that in order to give people time to discuss the play, afterwards, which is really, I think, some of the most exciting time of the reading. And then we say, "Well, what do you think of this?" "What does this say?" "Does this seem like an early play of Shakespeare?" "Does this seem like a later play?" "What themes does he bring up that belongs in other ones?" That lecture auditorium seats 120 people, and we have had a steady stream of between 70 and 120 people maximum people this entire year. We only have two of them left, Henry VI ii and Henry VI iii.

And what we're doing this year is reading the entire Wars of the Roses, all the history plays leading up to Richard III, which we're doing in the spring. So if you came on board with us in September you got to see Richard II and then Henry IV parts i and ii, Henry V, and we're now in the Henry VI plays, just before Richard III. And there are about 65-70 people who have been to every single one of them. And if you come to all of them, then you get a free ticket to Richard III, although I really don't think that's the draw, that's the perk.

But what's fabulous for those people in particular is learning who everybody is, what all the history is, all the way back to people who are not named in Richard III . . . and how we got here. You know Richard II is the culmination of 100 years of war--a hundred years of consistent family bickering back and forth war, and that has drastic consequences in that play. And those people who have journeyed with us will have an immediate understanding as opposed to learning as we go along with the play . . .

Jodie Marion I teach Composition at UCF while also studying for my Master's degree, which should be completed--hopefully--before the turn of the century. In the meantime I write for the Central Florida Hispanic (Education section) and especially dig reading Lawrence Durrell. Other Articles I've Written