“It’s one of the greatest pieces of Shakespeare because it includes everything,” senior Julie Finke said.
“Except a shipwreck,” senior Maran McLeod said, smiling.
The pair are co-directing this year’s Shakespeare in the Arb production of “Cymbeline.”
Though many on Hillsdale’s campus were introduced to “Cymbeline” for the first time through last week’s auditions, the directors’ journey to the play began at the end of last semester. Finke and McLeod read through four or five other plays over the summer before choosing it, and then spent seven hours cutting the play to make it doable for a spring production. “Cymbeline” is Shakespeare’s third-longest play, following “Hamlet” and “Coriolanus.”
“It’s a great play that just doesn’t get put on a lot because of its length,” McLeod said.
The women were drawn to the play because, unlike many Shakespeare plays which seem to fall clearly into one dramatic category —tragedy or comedy— “Cymbeline” doesn’t, though Shakespeare himself considered it a tragedy.
“Cymbeline,” like most of Shakespeare’s plays, has a labyrinthine plotline, and a cast full of characters whose names are as colorful as the language they speak. A play synopsis alludes to the whole range of human experience —sorrow, humor, deception, fraud, headlessness, the heights of love and the depths of despair. A Shakespearean trope, even crossdressing makes an appearance.
Finke and McLeod have dreamed of directing a Shakespeare in the Arb since they were freshman —for Finke, even before.
“I love Shakespeare, and I love the arb, and the two of them put together is one of the main reasons I chose to come to Hillsdale,” she said. “So this is a very big dream.”
Finke said her acting experience before Hillsdale was limited but deeply enjoyable. A tradition in her family was to send the children, once they were old enough, to the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s summer camp. Finke attended the camp five times, and there discovered her love both for Shakespeare and acting.
In fact, another Hillsdale student and Shakespeare-in-the-Arb devotee, senior Sean Kunath, met Finke at the Cincinnati camp and has since auditioned for the arb production every year, including “Cymbeline” last week, in which he will play the Roman Philario.
“What’s beautiful about Shakespeare is there are so many different ways to interpret and perform it that don’t seem present in modern plays,” Kunath said.
McLeod’s exposure to the arts has been lifelong, beginning when she was small, with ballet and opera. McLeod performed with the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus in “Hansel and Gretel” and “The Damnation of Faust,” and has since practiced pantomime through ballet.
When Finke and McLeod acted in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” their freshman year, they discovered they shared a dream of directing. Finally, that dream is becoming a reality for the two friends with “Cymbeline.”
Like Finke, sophomore Dani Morey was drawn to Hillsdale because of the theater. Morey visited the college and watched the theater department’s production of “Cymbeline.” From that moment, she knew that she wanted both to come to Hillsdale and to act in “Cymbeline.” someday.
Last Saturday, Morey was cast as Imogen, the play’s heroine. Morey said she’s intrigued by the play because it has, “all of the Shakespeare plot points thrown into one.”
