By Naomi Gish
Oregon Shakespeare Festival actors Jeremy Thompson and Omoze Adhenre entertained and tutored Peninsula College students on Nov. 19 in the Little Theater.
Invited by English professors Kate Reavy and Janet Lucus, the duo were on their second to last stop on a six-week adventure of visiting schools; junior high, high school and college level, in Washington and Oregon.
Performing Hamlet with only two actors called for some quick costume changes that comically consisted of chiefly tiara or necktie substitutions that were taken place in an instant.
The impressive team not only performed a dozen or so characters in their version of Hamlet, but also jumped into narrator mode at any moment, to guide their audience.
Thespians, though they were, the traveling troupe wore many hats that day as they, following their performances, led a workshop for a small group of students and interested community members.
The theme for the lesson was storytelling. With a few group exercises amid many shared laughs and new insights, students partook in telling one word stories with a partner, ultimately concluding in a tale as mystifying listened to as it was entertaining to create.
Continuing with Shakespeare, “the master of the one sentence story” Adhenre said, participants created “sculptured” lines where one would mold another physically into a statue expressing one line from the Ghosts monologue in Hamlet.
Further breaking down the four-tiered piece from Shakespeare’s perhaps most familiar play, students began to understand the tongue and mind twisting soliloquy for the depth and spirit it really possessed, which is possibly to understand with the right tutor.
At every chance, the Portland actors asked participants to give ideas behind the Ghosts words of choice and everyone decided upon a new appreciation for the physical involvement when it all was over.
