From page to stage: Here’s where Lee’s Summit youth can find their Shakespearean vibe

Ever met an artless folly-fallen apple-john? That’s just one of the Shakespearean-style insults youth can learn at the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival’s Project Shakespeare teen workshops, being held at various branches of the Mid-Continent Public Library through Jan. 26.

Although the festival has done various workshops with the library system over the past 10 years, this one is new. At a recent workshop at the Lee’s Summit Mid-Continent location, teaching artist Erika Baker led participants through a series of acting exercises, followed by a create-your-own Shakespearean insult game.

The other Shakespeare content for this particular set of free workshops is focused on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Participants read through a set of scenes from various points in the comedy then get the chance to act them out, complete with costumes.

“I think the library basically wanted us to do something more expansive. This is a two-hour workshop. Usually, our workshops are an hour to 90 minutes,” said Matt Rapport, director of education for the festival. “They were looking for something a little more in-depth and that had a little more of a performance element to it.”

Young thespians will also learn a bit about the Bard and the historical context in which he wrote his plays. Although there’s some discussion of things like iambic pentameter, the meter Shakespeare sometimes used, the focus is more on taking the words on the page and bringing them to a stage.

“We’re not trying to put on a show so much as just give them the experience. One of the fundamental things we build our education program on is that Shakespeare is best experienced by doing it or seeing it, as opposed to reading it like a book,” Rapport said. “The ultimate goal is to get students up on their feet, working with words and doing some physicalization of the characters.”

English doesn’t have to be a favorite class for the youth to have a good time, as long as they have what Rapport describes as “a natural curiosity” about it.

“Shakespeare has a lot of parallels with the worlds of ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ and fantasy genres,” Rapport said. “I think the students that do come to our workshops already have predilection for that type of stuff. I think they get excited about getting to inhabit the characters and the worlds Shakespeare created.”

Thirteen-year-old Ava Chiarelli had been to one of the festival’s other workshops before attending the one at the Lee’s Summit Library. Her dad, Adam Chiarelli, said the library is a familiar place for them to seek enrichment.

“We’ve been taking huge advantage of all the classes the library has been offering. It’s a gift. We love them. This is probably the most dynamic one,” he said.

Don’t worry if you find Shakespearean language a little bit intimidating — you can still learn and take part in the workshop.

“We certainly don’t expect anyone to be an expert by the end of our two-hour session,” Rapport said.

“That’s where the more academic part of the workshop comes in, giving them some tools to help understand how to navigate the language and read the words and understand what Shakespeare’s trying to say and hopefully take out that intimidation factor (of), ‘Oh, this is old, fancy language I’ll never get.’”

He especially loves “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as a vehicle for getting people interested in Shakespeare’s plays.

“It really covers a lot of what’s great about Shakespeare,” Rapport said.

“It has beautiful language, but it’s also very silly with ridiculous circumstances. It just covers a lot of bases of what I personally love about Shakespeare’s plays: being able to identify with these common emotional elements of love, jealousy and drive, as well as the pure silliness of the some of the comedy of it.”

To see times and places for the Project Shakespeare workshops, visit mymcpl.org/events.