O, happy noise! O, happy students!

Eloquent players abound at DPS Shakespeare fest

By Val Moses, Special to the Rocky

Originally published 09:30 p.m., May 9, 2008
Updated 03:10 p.m., May 11, 2008

Photo by Matt McClain

MJM960 Thomas Jefferson High School's Zach Salas (cq), 15, warms up with others as they wait to perform some original compositions and older pieces Friday 05/09/08 as thousands of Denver Public School students took part in the 24th annual Shakespeare Festival at the Denver Performing Arts Complex in Downtown Denver. (MATT MCCLAIN/ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS)

Matt McClain / The Rocky

Getting ready backstage for a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream are Elaine Nguyen, 11, left, and Yulissa Ayala, 10, both of Lincoln Elementary School. They were among the thousands who performed Friday at the Denver Performing Arts Complex.

Matt McClain / The Rocky

Aubree Nave, 7, left, and Agok Mabil, 7, of Barrett Elementary School hold onto their maypole ribbons as they joined 4,000 costumed students at the DPS Shakespeare festival Friday.

The scene was the Galleria at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

The occasion - Denver's longest-running theatrical engagement, which Friday celebrated its 24th year.

A cast of thousands (almost 4,000, actually) performed 400 scenes on 12 stages over the course of four hours. Average age of the players - 11.

O, happy noise! Thy name is the Denver Public Schools' Shakespeare Festival.

The dress code was elaborate, from faux velvets to gold lame and caps pulled down at jaunty angles. The young faces were painted - not with slapdash rainbows - but with beards and mustaches.

For all the noise - and there was lots of it - things were surprisingly sedate and purposeful. Tragedies, comedies and histories swirled as young voices shouted out difficult turns of phrase.

Friends and classmates cheered after every performance. The combination made it all sound more like a swim meet than an encounter with Will Shakespeare. But when the words did come clear, you heard amazing things.

A fifth-grader in a high red crown made King Lear's promise "to make known our darker purpose." A 12-year-old boy used the word "canard" in a speech from The Merry Wives of Windsor.

The girl who just two years ago starred in Three Billy Goats Gruff was now playing Hamlet's mother. Another girl sported a neon-pink cast underneath the sleeve of her green-velvet period dress.

Four kids wrestling on stage like siblings were broken apart by a girl shouting "Stop it!" so intensely that her fellow players stopped in their tracks. Romeo shouted "Mercutio!" more in exasperation than in grief, then bolted from the stage microphone in hand, leaving the other speeches inaudible.

For some, it was their first brush with the bard, like the first-graders who were there to do "a Shakespeare dance," happy just to shake their bell-bracelets all together.

The tiny guy who'd lost some baby teeth whistled out his lines with gusto - "Good hearts! Good hearts!"

Fun? Yes. Young? Yes. But good hearts abounded.

As a fourth-grader explained, "Shakespeare wrote about the old times when people were having trouble with love."

On the advice of his teacher, a 15-year-old Richard III prepared for his role by prowling the halls of his school, limping and hunchbacked so he could feel his classmates' derision and know how this "twisted character" felt every day of his life. Even so, he wishes the king a better life. What would he tell poor Richard if he had the chance?

"Lighten up a little. Find what makes you happy. The best way to make yourself happy is to make others happy. He needs to learn that. But there's no one there to teach him."

Special thanks go to players: Quinn Marchman, Gabrielle Scozak, Jeniesia Ferrell, Jeremiah Graham, Itzael Vargas, Diondre McBride, Jennifer Gaudreault, Max Mehlman, Tali Butz and Hussein Nuya.

All of Denver a stage

4,000 students from Denver Public Schools participated in Friday's annual Shakespeare Festival.

12 stages in downtown Denver carried performances throughout the day.

• May 10, 2008

  7:25 p.m.

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  HollyGoLightly writes:

  I think it is cool to see the kids experience Shakespeare. From what I can see in the photos, the costumes were wonderful.