Teens’ Summer Is One of Infinite Jest

Shakespeare may have mused about summer being eternal, but Claire Haider’s lasts only 12 weeks.

Still, the Ojai teenager and about a dozen other Ventura County middle and high school students have chosen to spend that valuable time off dedicated to the Bard, working as actors and producers in the Ojai Shakespeare Festival’s renowned summer intern program.

“It’s an experience I don’t think I could get anywhere else,” said the 15-year-old Claire, who talks as if she’s going on 40. “In all the years I’ve been doing Shakespeare plays, I don’t think I’ve grown as an actor as much as I have doing this.”

In the youth program, which organizers say is the only one of its kind in Southern California, the students have spent 30 hours a week mastering the Elizabethan dialect, memorizing lines, rehearsing scenes and practicing slapstick stunts for the wacky “Comedy of Errors,” which they will perform later this month at Ojai’s Libbey Bowl.

At the same time, students are helping to build sets, assembling costumes and learning the technical aspects of putting on a production, including lighting and sound.

“I have learned so much more here so far than I did in a whole year of drama class,” said 16-year-old Dekyi Ronge, who attends Nordhoff High School in Ojai. “I’m amazed at how much you can learn, actually.”

A diverse group, the student interns range in age from 13 to 18. They also vary in their experience with Shakespeare, from Claire -- who memorized “Romeo and Juliet” in the third grade -- to 16-year-old Nordhoff student Jim Engel, who is only just discovering the famous playwright’s sharp wit.

“He has a very good sense of humor,” Jim said. “It’s totally cool.”

The youth program has grown in the last 12 years from one in which student interns worked backstage on the adult production to its current incarnation, which has teenagers producing a full-length play of their own, said Jaye Hersh, artistic director for the festival and founder of the youth program.

“They bring a lot of freshness to it,” Hersh said, adding that some festival-goers prefer the youth production over the adult one. “As teenagers, they understand the emotional ups and downs of Shakespeare because their hormones are going crazy.”

This year, for the second time, the young actors will perform on the main stage at Libbey Bowl rather than on a grassy area of the park, making the Ojai program distinctive in the state and across the country, said Ryan Lee, director of the youth production.

The 32-year-old Lee, an actor, director and teacher in regional theater for the last seven years, attends annual conferences put on by the Shakespeare Theater Assn. of America.

“People are fascinated by it,” he said. “They want to know, how in the world do you get high school students to do this?”

It’s not so difficult, said Lee: If you treat teenagers with respect and don’t underestimate them, they will perform beyond all expectations.

“I tell them, ‘I am serious about this, and if you can be serious about it, too, by the end you will have something you are really proud of,’ ” Lee said. “These are talented kids, but all teenagers have the ability to do this. It’s just the people running things that say, ‘Oh, they can’t do that.’ ”

Lee said he always tries to find something in the play to which young people can connect. Ojai Shakespeare Festival organizers pick the play the student group will perform each year.

“Part of it is demystifying the Shakespeare, hard-language thing,” Lee said, “and making them relate to something.”

“Comedy of Errors” is the story of two sets of twins -- one set named Antipholus and the other Dromio -- who are separated in a shipwreck early in life and then, unbeknownst to them, end up in the same town years later. Mistaken identities follow.

Describing it as a “silly, ridiculous play,” Lee said he chose an approach that mixes popular comedic westerns like “Maverick” and “Blazing Saddles” with the slapstick comedy of silent film stars like Buster Keaton and the outlandish gags found in Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Teenage actors speak their Shakespearean lines in comical Southern drawls -- except for the two characters from Syracuse, who speak with hilarious Brooklyn inflections -- and there are at least 25 “beatings” that students must act out.

The accents, especially, are a risk, Lee admits, and the students said that at first they were a bit nonplussed themselves.

“Honestly, in the beginning, I thought it was stupid,” said 17-year-old Leanna Downing of Ojai. “But then when we did it, it made sense. It totally works.”

Despite the hilarity of the material, the process of producing the play is serious stuff.

At a recent rehearsal, the actors stood on a makeshift stage at the home of festival President Dave Farber, a half a dozen large oak trees shading them from the hot Ojai sun.

Lee, scratching his head under a baseball cap, watched intently as the teenagers started a scene from Act 5.

He interrupted them frequently, directing one girl to emphasize certain words over others, showing another exactly where to stand and taking one boy through his character’s mind-set to help make the scene more realistic.

They went through one small portion of the dialogue at least five times before moving on to the next portion. Students said they love Lee’s directing style, never mind the hard work. Interns must audition for the parts and pay $300 for the 12-week program.

Claire, who reluctantly took the part of the gruff, overweight sheriff (the thin teenager will don a fat-suit in the production), said the role has forced her to become more comfortable with herself and the other actors on stage.

Lee “sees the potential in everyone and knows how to bring it out,” she said. “This challenges me in a way I’ve never been challenged before.”

And all of the teenagers said they appreciated the opportunity to be themselves without having to try to be “cool.”

“Here, the cliques disappear,” said Leanna, a five-year veteran of the summer intern program. “We’re all actors, so we’re all strange.”

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The Ojai Shakespeare Festival opens July 26 Saturday with “King Lear,” directed by Paul Backer, at Libbey Bowl in Ojai. All shows start at 7:30 p.m. and run Fridays through Sundays until Aug. 17.

“Comedy of Errors,” the student intern show directed by Ryan Lee, opens July 31 at Libbey Bowl. Thursday night shows start at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday shows start at 4 p.m., through Aug. 17.