December 10, 2003
St. Francis students stage 'Comedy of Errors'
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
The next era of drama at St. Francis High School debuted this weekend with the staging of Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors." For three performances, a mixed cast of veterans and complete acting novices mastered the Bard's fast-paced comedy, presented in an updated setting of 19th century Turkey.
Directed by Luis Araquistain, the students recreated the confusion, romance, comedy and redemption of the classic play.
While the students presented a slightly abbreviated version of the play, they still mastered the language and phrasing as originally penned by Shakespeare. This challenge, on top of typical production issues, was difficult but doable.
They started rehearsals at the beginning of the school year and for three months, the students practiced four times a week for two hours a day. Student actors also created sets, costumes, programs and helped with all aspects of the production. This was in addition to script memorization on their own, as main characters had long and complex scenes.
"The language is extra difficult to memorize, it took me over three hours to memorize my monologue," said Nick Bott, who played Antipholus of Syracuse, one of two sets of twins mixed up from a young age.
Araquistain said the strength of the student actors carried the play as some key roles went to inexperienced but talented actors.
Araquistain auditioned students in an unusual way: by challenging them to Shakespeare improv. He gave them a plot synopsis in his words, modern words, then had them improvise scenes. This process grounded them in the plot without intimidating them with the complex phrasing, he noted.
"It freed them so much because it allowed them to get into the comical aspect of it and at the same time it made them familiar with the concepts and the themes without even looking at one word of text," said Araquistain, who also serves as director of the Traverse City Children's Theater. "They have a fairly strong program at the school and I was very surprised at the level of talent that I saw there."
Novice actor Emily Preston landed a lead role as Adriana, wife of Antipholus of Ephesus. Before her audition, Preston's previous acting experience consisted of a small part in a kindergarten Christmas pageant.
"The biggest challenge for me was learning cues," said Preston, a ninth-grade student at the school. "I memorized my lines by just reading them through a couple of times myself, reading one line and saying it to myself over and over."
Araquistain, who was hired by the school to direct the play, initially talked with students about what kind of production they wanted to do. They strongly favored a comedy and he suggested Shakespeare, getting a lukewarm reception at first. As he began reviewing Shakespeare's extensive works, he came across Comedy of Errors. Then something clicked and the whole staging came to him in a flash.
"The muse came to me at that very moment," he recalled, adding that he had looked up the location of Ephesus, the play's setting, before he started rereading the play. "Ephesus was in Turkey and I had this vision of a Middle Eastern society, which is why I chose to open the play with a Muslim call to prayer and set it in that era."
Araquistain said the reconciliation of the two sets of twins in the play, created in his staging as one raised as Muslim and one raised as Eastern Orthodox Christian, was important. This redeemed the initial antagonisms between the two societies portrayed at the beginning of the play.
"In the end sort of a peace is made and the element of aggression and the enmity, which is characterized by the Mullahs, at the end the Duchess rejects them and they go off into a huff," he said. "Then everyone goes into the abbey, Muslims, Jews and Christians, to join together in peacefulness."