The Drama Club’s bulletin board outside of the auditorium.

Solon High School Drama Club has started their work on the fall play for this year, “King Lear.” The Shakespeare piece follows the story of a king in ancient Britain, who plans to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, creating the struggle for power and competition within the family.

Drama Club adviser Kris Ferencie said she chose this play because they are slowly working through all of the big Shakespeare titles. She says the Drama Club does a Shakespeare piece every four years, so everyone can experience it once in their high school career.

“‘Lear’ is something I’ve always wanted to tackle,” Ferencie said. “And in talking with students about possibilities last spring, that was the one that guarded the most interest.”

Although Ferencie says Shakespeare can be a lot of fun, she also says the language is the most difficult part when acting in a Shakespeare piece. Senior Maggie Coggin plays one of the lead roles, Princess Cordelia, one of the King’s daughters and said she agrees on how difficult the language can be difficult to read, let alone act out.

“When you’re reading Shakespeare, you have to make sure you’re respecting the punctuation and not accidentally taking a different meaning because we don’t talk like that, and it’s hard to understand what he actually meant,” Coggin said.

Senior Jesse Moore, playing King Lear, says it is difficult to get into character when acting with a complex script.

“You want to know what character you’re playing,” Moore said. “You want to figure out your character and all the intricate aspects of them, and then you start memorizing your lines.”

In another aspect of creating a play, Ferencie said each show differs in challenge areas when figuring out what pieces and parts are essential and what should be a focus point during rehearsal.

“There’s stage combat that goes along with this [this play],” Ferencie said. “We’ll be bringing in a fight choreographer to help us stage all of that safely and very excitingly.”

When working on a Shakespeare piece, or any show in general, Ferencie said that there are a lot of parts to put together. This year, Ferencie said that they are using a black box theater setup, meaning that the audience will essentially be onstage with the cast. Coggin, Moore and Ferencie all agree that what Drama Club does is not easy, especially when it comes to complicated shows.

Coggin said when the show is almost finished and everyone is acting onstage together it can feel magical.

“You see all of your friends and you know them outside of the show, but when they’re wearing their costumes and they’re onstage, they are a completely different person,” she said.

According to Ferencie, the play will take place Thursday Nov.21 – Sunday Nov. 24, and tickets will be on sale on the SHS website sometime in November.

“He [Shakespeare] wasn’t meant to be read,” Ferencie said. “He was meant to be heard, seen and performed.”