SHS Drama Club presents ‘Much Ado About Nothing’

Solon High School’s Drama Club is bringing back Shakespeare for the fall play. Director Kristina Ferencie is putting a spin on “Much Ado About Nothing”, a classic comedy by Shakespeare, by having it take place in modern times while characters speak in Shakespeare’s style of Early Modern English. The play will take place on a college campus where the two main characters, Benedick and Beatrice, who once hated each other end up falling in love.

Ferencie, Drama Club adviser since 2001, said she chose this play to communicate her love of Shakespeare with her high school students and to bring The Bard’s work outside of the classroom.

“He was never meant to be read in an English class. It’s understandable when [students] say that they hate Shakespeare and that they don’t understand him,” Ferencie said. “He was meant to be heard and to be seen.”

Although Ferencie said she was excited to present this play to her students, many of them felt apprehensive at first. Knowing they were going to be face to face with Shakespeare’s work, they were unsure of how well their performance would go.

Drama Club Secretary and senior Greg Davidson, who is portraying Benedick in the play, said he was anxious at the start of rehearsals because of the difficulty of the language. But Davidson said that once the audience gets past the intricate language, they’ll be very surprised to see how humorous the play actually is, especially because Shakespeare is not as well known for his comedic plays.

Using Shakespeare’s language and combining that with modern times puts a twist to the play. Junior Emma Moughan, who plays Hero, described her favorite scene as the Halloween party, which takes place in today’s society.

“We’re going as [more scandalous] bunnies, which is going to be really funny,” Moughan said. “I’m just excited for that scene as a whole.”

As the students get closer to opening night, they have more rehearsals and practice time. Davidson described how behind the scenes, everyone is getting ready and moving into tech week. For this, the students get to rehearse with their costumes on and experiment with the lights and the stage setting. Davidson said that even though the rehearsals get really long, they’re really fun and help prepare everyone for the upcoming show.

During tech week, one of the main parts  is to set up the stage. Whenever the high school does Shakespeare, they perform it in a black box form, where the audience is sitting up on stage with the actors. When audience members look across the stage, they see the other audience members across from them. Ferencie described this setting as being in a tennis match.

With the audience so close, they get to absorb more of the emotion of the play, Ferencie said. Overall, Ferencie describes this play as being more lighthearted than all of Shakespeare’s other work, but she says that’s what makes this play so unique.

“This is not Hamlet,” Ferencie said. “It’s not angsty, you know? There are some serious moments, but it’s very lighthearted. It’s like the title says: much ado about, really, absolutely nothing. All this kerfuffle about nothing, but that’s what makes it interesting.”