Modern-Day Shakespeare
Marie Devers
As she stared at the stage, Izzy’s mind returned to dress rehearsal, where she had performed as if the school amphitheater was already filled with a captivated audience. She had read out her lines:
Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
Hear me with patience but to speak a word.
3When she spoke these words to the empty seats that stretched on forever to the back of the room, she heard her supporting actors gasp at the emotion in her voice. Before the actor playing her father could respond with his lines, the drama teacher, Mr. Balthazar clapped his hands so loudly that the sound echoed throughout the area and he called out, “Nice emoting, Izzy!”
4Izzy’s mind quickly flashed to the discussion she had with her parents the previous evening. As they sat around the dining room table, her parents—both professors at a prestigious college—asked if she had given any thought to a college major. Although she was in the ninth grade, Izzy’s parents wanted her to get a jump on the college application process. Izzy explained that she was contemplating the theater program at New York University, and as she expected, her father cleared his throat, set down his glass of milk, and sternly gazed at her across the table. Izzy’s mother explained that acting was checkers or cards—a hobby—whereas they wanted Izzy to major in a subject that would allow her financial success.
“What would you like me to be?” Izzy inquired.
“A college professor would be a nice career choice, no?” Izzy’s mother answered predictably.
7Now, Izzy stood on the stage in the amphitheater all by herself. She had come to the amphitheater to see the stage arranged for the school’s production of Romeo and Juliet, and now, she climbed up and looked at the seats that stretched to the back of the amphitheater. She imagined the audience that would fill those seats—her neighbors, classmates, and (gulp) her parents. For one night, she would pronounce her lines and listen to the inspirational resonance of a room full of gracious applause. She reflected on why her parents could not see that this was her dream and that she wanted to pursue it. She imagined that Shakespeare and his actors did not have to deal with this pressure.
Out into the empty theater, Izzy called:
9All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
After the lines had left her lips, Izzy realized that she had not been alone in the massive amphitheater after all. Just as she finished muttering the lines from one of her favorite Shakespeare plays, she heard a single person applauding—Mr. Balthazar, the theater teacher. His hollow clapping echoed off the acoustic boards that hung on the walls.
He walked toward the stage; Izzy stood in the center of the circle where the spotlight focused during soliloquies. Mr. Balthazar asked Izzy what she was doing hanging in the amphitheatre reciting lines to no one but herself, and she explained that she was contemplating what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.
“You’re going to decide that today?” he asked
13“Before eighth period,” Izzy joked. She explained that her parents didn’t understand that acting could be a real career. She compared herself to the actors of Shakespeare’s era, saying that she wished she could be respected as they most likely were.
Mr. Balthazar chuckled and corrected Izzy’s view of how it must have been for actors in Shakespeare’s time.
“Actually, people thought acting was even less important than your parents think it is. In Shakespeare’s time,” Mr. Balthazar explained, “audiences sometimes heckled the actors and threw rotten fruit at them. Many actors worked for free!”
16Izzy’s surprise was evident on her face as she tried to wrap her mind around this new information. Mr. Balthazar then compared Izzy’s parents to Juliet’s parents in Romeo and Juliet.
“They only want what’s best for their daughter,” he said. “They only want her to have a nice life—where she does not have to struggle.”
Izzy let these new ideas seep into her mind in the days leading up to opening night. When the stage lights finally illuminated all that the students had worked on for so long, Izzy relished every moment of the production. The audience bestowed on Izzy her very first standing ovation, and after her final bow, Izzy’s parents greeted her with two things that she was astonished to see: they had tears in their eyes and a giant bouquet of red roses in their arms. Her parents hugged Izzy and said how moved they had been by her performance.
On the way home, Izzy realized that unlike the actors in Shakespeare’s time, she had all sorts of freedoms. At least her parents had not thrown rotten fruit at her! A few days later, her parents asked her the same old question. Now that her first high-school play was over, had she given any thought to what she might want to do for a career?
She thought of her parents, and Mr. Balthazar, and even William Shakespeare before she offered a response.
“I thought I might look into being a drama professor,” Izzy declared.
Question
Based on the story, which is a research topic that Izzy might be inspired to learn more about?
Responses
A theatre architecturetheatre architecture
B how to choose a collegehow to choose a college
C acting during Shakespeare’s timeacting during Shakespeare’s time
D finding a financially lucrative career