 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.
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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