 Sherry
Schreck and her young thespians rehearse a scene from Shakespeare’s A
Midsummer Night’s Dream in Wenatchee’s Riverside
Playhouse. Photo by Don Seabrook
by
Pat Caraher • photography
by Don Seabrook
In a scene
from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Demetrius calls
for a sword. His request produces instead a yellow rubber chicken
tossed from off stage.
“Shakespeare
should be fun,” says Sherry Chastain Schreck, founding
director of the “Short Shakespeareans.” Children
in the drama troupe are 4 to 15, most of them pre-teenagers.
In the 25 years since making their debut, the thespians have
become a community treasure in Wenatchee.
A Midsummer
Night’s Dream is a favorite of the Short Shakes. “The
children love it. It is easy for young people to follow and
understand,” Schreck says.
While the
cast of characters has changed over the years, the enthusiasm
never wanes. That was obvious in the troupe’s final summer
performance last August. Approximately 30 youngsters danced about
the stage in Wenatchee’s packed Riverside Playhouse, spouting
a language from another era.
The two-hour
production was a showcase for little dukes and queens, jesters,
elves, and fairies. Some wore floppy caps, tunics, and tights.
Others dressed in satin or velvet gowns, hair done up in braids.
Under the stage lights, sequins on their costumes sparkled like
their eyes.
Schreck’s
goal is not to make all of them little actors and actresses,
but to expose them to the theater, to have children come to love
the language of Shakespeare.
The director
has built her reputation on her love of children and Shakespeare
and her unbridled imagination. She’s directed more than
150 plays while teaching in north central Washington middle schools
and high schools. For more than two decades, she and her Short
Shakes caravanned to Ashland, where they performed and attended
plays and workshops at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She taught
children’s Shakespeare in Southern Oregon University’s
Academy Program for 20 summers, and now heads the theater program
at Wenatchee Valley College.
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