A Tragic Triumph
Parker Performs Tragedies in its First Ever Shakespeare Slam Final Bout
Photo credit: Molly Taylor
Parker’s Slam ensemble line back to declare their presence before beginning their first scene, “Lavinia’s Lament.”
The five members of Parker’s Shakespeare Slam ensemble ascend the steps to the stage at Navy Pier’s Yard Theater, single file. On their way, they high-five the students sitting in the front row aisles.
The stage is modest, just wide enough for them to line up side by side. The actors, whose costumes entail dark pants paired with a black t-shirt, face the audience and pause for a moment. In Shakespeare Slam culture, more elaborate attire is prohibited — no props either, beyond eight optional chairs. The idea is that students portray their scenes without any outside help, capitalizing on their ability to convey emotion.
“We are Francis Parker, and we own this stage.”
The ensemble declares their presence in unison and is met with cheers and snaps from the crowd. Some audience members wave mini Shakespeare fans, printouts of the author’s head attached to a stick.
And it begins.
We are Francis Parker, and we own this stage.
Over the next five minutes, Parker’s Shakespeare Slam team performs its violent scene “Lavinia’s Lament,” an excerpt from “Titus Andronicus.” In the section of the story, Empress Tamora — sophomore Gabriel Logan — is caught having an affair by Aaron, sophomore Grayson Schementi and Lavinia, junior Isabel Olesinski. Angered, Tamora orders her sons, Chiron and Demetrius — sophomore Will Ehrlich and junior Isaac Warshaw, respectively — to rape Lavinia, King Titus’s daughter.
Despite the tragedy, Parker’s ensemble was elated to perform on Monday, December 10, according to English teacher Bonnie Seebold, who advises the program alongside English teacher Cory Zeller. It had finally advanced to the Shakespeare Slam Final Bout, an achievement no other Parker team had reached in the six years of the competition’s existence.
“We’ve evolved over the years,” Seebold said. “We’ve learned what the judges like, and if you’re trying to win the prize, you have to do these things.” For example, the team opted not to choose a comedy as they had in past year because they noticed tragedies tend to receive higher marks.
Out of the nine Chicagoland teams that competed for the first place $1000 prize, Parker did not place in the top four, which were announced. Still, in order to advance to the finals, they finished in the top three out of 15 in their Regional Bout, held earlier this month at Northridge High School. There were three separate Regional Bouts, so selection to the finals put Parker in the best nine out of 45.
The judges—professional actors, most with experience in Shakespeare productions—assessed teams on both their “scene” performance, just a portion of any Shakespeare play, as well as their “dream” performance, which each ensemble created by mashing up lines from Macbeth.
Parker’s “dream” performance was called “Council By Men,” and was written to make a point about female voices in society, inspired by the recent Kavanaugh hearings.
“In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is a central character and she plans most of the life of Macbeth, making him king, so we did a play on that,” Olesinski said. “Later, she goes crazy, and eventually she gets sent off to an insane asylum, and no one believes her, because she’s a woman. We wanted to do a story of women not being believed, and it was very powerful.”
Other ensembles connected their Macbeth mashups to current events, too. One was about school shootings, and another about party culture, according to Olesinski.
Through his involvement on the team, Warshaw came to value Shakespeare’s relevance to today. “It’s not some dry, impenetrable text,” he said. “It’s very accessible. You can modernize it.”
Still, it proved to be difficult for the actors to fully understand and embrace their roles. For Ehrlich, he watched three different movie productions of “Titus Andronicus” to gain a solid grasp of how to portray his character.
Olesinski credits the ensemble’s cohesion for their success. “Since we were doing a very intense tragedy for our scene,” she said, “it took awhile for us to get in that mindset and separate our characters’ morals from our own, which are extremely different. For ‘Titus Andronicus,’ I was glad I had this team because I trust them.”
Seebold, who teaches a Shakespeare elective, appreciates that students have the opportunity to engage with the author. “Once students start watching his plays, I always say it’s not a hard sell,” Seebold said. “He could write comedy, tragedy, or fairy tales. He has such an incredible understanding of humanity.”
