ESU Experiences Megg Ward

My experience at the University of Cambridge summer school was truly extraordinary. I have always known that I loved Shakespeare, loved performing and studying his works as literature, but I have never had the opportunity to study such a breadth of his works in such an immersive setting. Through plenary lectures and my classes, I was able to explore Shakespeare’s career as a writer from his early plays, which had roots in Roman and medieval comedy, to his later plays where he developed an aesthetic and writing style of his own, blending genre and challenging conventional theatrical unities. The summer school also served as a sort of British monarchial boot camp, and I learned a great deal about the historical legacy of Shakespeare’s history plays and the notions of kingship inherent in his writings. These notions were almost entirely new to me, coming from an American-trained Shakespearean background.

I took four classes, one of which was a performance based course taught by Professor

Vivien Heilbron. Professor Heilbron was trained by Kristen Linklater, a vocal coach who had been in residence at the University of Louisville for a year, training my own vocal coach Dr.

Rinda Frye. With my background in her approach to speaking Shakespeare, Professor Heilbron and I connected very quickly and she became a wonderful research asset and mentor while writing my papers. Also during this class I had the pleasure of meeting a member of the

Kentucky ESU branch, Sylvia Bruton. I then went on to have class with her husband, Grant

Bruton in the next week, where we studied King Lear. It was a surreal, but wonderful surprise to meet two other Louisvillians in Cambridge!

In London, I had the opportunity to visit the Globe and see a production of Antony and

Cleopatra, which was extraordinary. One of the excursions in which I participated took

Cambridge summer school students to a production of Henry IV in Stratford-upon-Avon. We were allowed to walk around Stratford for a few hours before the show, and I visited both the birthplace and the grave of Shakespeare in that time. The production itself was spectacular, particularly for me because I have not had the opportunity to see many of Shakespeare’s histories produced. Excepting Richard III, in my educational experience most of the histories seem to be placed in the background in favor of Shakespeare’s more famous plays like Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. After viewing Henry IV and studying the histories through my courses at

Cambridge, I have come to appreciate them so much more and want to find a way to revive them in my community.

This summer’s travels solidified my desire to pursue Shakespearean performance as a graduate student. Through the intense scholastic immersion, I discovered I became more intrigued by Shakespeare’s ideas and language the more deeply I studied him. Upon my return to classes this fall, I embarked on my undergraduate thesis project which will revolve around my performance of Emilia in Othello. I will explore the notions of Shakespearean female self- making in the context of modern theatrical production. This undergraduate thesis utilizes the ways of thinking about Shakespeare I learned in Cambridge and applies them to the creation of modern theatre. This fusion has inspired me to pursue several international graduate school scholarships, all with the intent to study Shakespeare in the UK. The programs I have selected focus not only on historical study of Shakespeare, but also in the development of Shakespeare for modern audiences, the aspect in which I am most interested.

I thank the ESU so much for giving me this incredible opportunity. Thanks to my experience at Cambridge, I now know that Shakespeare is what I want study at the post graduate level, and I have found the perfect fusion of my interests, bringing the past to life through theatre for modern audiences.