Then there was the matter of the show itself, a comedy where everything goes wrong, and then is righted. Kelly, who arrived at Metro seven years ago, jumped on board.

When they had the chance to add a school, Metro stuck out for its lack of an arts emphasis. For years, the organization has run a program at Mauro Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School, creating a portal to Shakespeare that students might not otherwise have. The collaboration was born months ago, after support from the Seedlings Foundation meant that Elm Shakespeare could grow its educational programming in the New Haven Public Schools. If the cast is any indication, students have. “I knew that I wanted to pick something that might make students fall in love with Shakespeare.” “It’s an old favorite, and a really, really fun show,” Bowles said of the play as cast members got into costume, ran their lines, and turned the school’s front office into a multi-part green room. Sarah Bowles, Elm’s director of education, directed the show alongside Fiona Jennings. It received support from the Seedlings Foundation and New Haven’s Neighborhood Cultural Vitality Grant Program. As they slipped into a world of fairy kings, royal engagements, botanical wonders and spellbound love triangles, cast members held tight to the value of magic and mischief in everyday interactions.īy the end, the performance spoke to the power of site-specific theater and comedy as a form of education. Last Tuesday, Sosa and his peers created that world in an abridged A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a collaboration with Elm Shakespeare Company and Metropolitan Business Academy drama teacher Stephanie Kelly. “It shall be called ‘Bottom’s Dream’ because it hath no bottom.” Laughter bubbled up around him. A smile tugged at the edges of his mouth, then migrated to his eyes. “I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream!” he exclaimed, a curtain of moss swaying gently behind him. Metropolitan Business Academy faded away, and an enchanted forest took its place. In another, a multi-level theater rose around him, complete with soaring scaffolding and a second story. In one universe, the room was just a high school cafeteria, light scattered across the floor from the street-facing windows. Patricio Sosa III looked out over the audience, suspended between realities.

From the moment he stepped onstage, he mastered the language and the timing of Shakespeare.

Ovid the art of love book 1