The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON - Dayton and Waitsburg students dove into Shakespeare's writings head first recently by working with professional actors in the classroom and even seeing some of the famous playwright's work onstage at the Liberty Theater.

Mary Pryor, a teacher at Dayton High School, said her students had a blast learning iambic pentameter and stage dancing during the week her ninth grade class was visited by teaching artists from Shakespeare Walla Walla.

Reading or acting out "Romeo and Juliet" is part of ninth grade curriculum in the state of Washington, Pryor said. Her class has always read the play, but this was the first year it got to see the tragedy performed live.

"Just to be able to see the play - it's so much more meaningful," she said.

Michelle Traverso, the education director with Shakespeare Walla Walla, said her organization through hires teaching artists, or professional actors, to visit classrooms all over the Walla Walla Valley each year to bring Shakespeare to life for local students.

The teaching artists have now visited Waitsburg for two years and this was Dayton's first year in the program, Traverso said.

The teaching artists held five-day residencies in each classroom. These actors are part of Shakespeare Walla Walla productions and will be onstage at the Power House Theatre in "Romeo and Juliet" and other productions in the coming months. Two classrooms at Dayton High School and one at Waitsburg High School received lessons from the artists recently.

The teaching artists follow a curriculum where they introduce the students to "Romeo and Juliet" through the actor's point of view, Traverso said.

The artists helped students understand the plot of the show and iambic pentameter and help them stage the opening fight between the Capulets and the Montagues.

"The students are far more interested in the literature because the artists make the play come alive," said Liv Leid, a teacher at Waitsburg High School. Leid said teaching her students different aspects of Elizabethan culture including dancing, sword fighting and Shakespearean language results in students who are more engaged than if they simply read the play in class.

In addition to acting out different scenes from the play, including the scene where Romeo and Juliet meet and recite the palm-topalm sonnet, the teaching artists also instruct students on how to pick out essential action of a play and stage their own "tableaus" or representations of scenes in the play. On the last day of the week of residency, the Waitsburg and Dayton students were treated to a performance of the play at the Liberty Theater by the Seattle Shakespeare Company. The company sends a troupe of six actors throughout the state to bring Shakespeare to life for students. In addition to the work in Waitsburg and Dayton schools, Traverso said students from the Jubilee Youth Ranch were invited to the Power House Theatre to learn stage combat and work with actors in their element.

The funding for the programs comes from school districts that can chip in and through grants and donations the theater collects throughout the year, she said.

"We couldn't do this without local support," Traverso added.

In addition to teaching "Romeo and Juliet" to ninth graders, the theater also sends teaching artists to local schools to learn about its current show "The Tempest" and will allow them to go to Walla Walla to see the show.

Recently, Traverso said seventh graders at Preston Hall in Waitsburg had a teaching artist in residency who taught them about being outsiders.

Pryor said many of her students already had some theater experience by being in or seeing one of the Touchet Valley Arts Council plays put on at the Liberty Theater, so it wasn't a new experience entirely. But, she believes getting kids into theater in any way is beneficial for them.

"Any exposure to theater is positive," Pryor said.