Special thanks go to my daughter, Sophia, the Queen of Astia, my faithful "cowboy astronomer," who put the following movies together for me (you will be reading her books one day!) Thanks also go to my son, Caleb, a talented musician, who put together the scores that you hear in these clips. Calvin, Trinity, Christian, and the other actors in our plays, make Shakespeare come alive for a new generation of fans.
THE LIFE OF SHAKESPEARE - IN 5 MINUTES
JULIUS CAESAR - JANUARY 2011
A trailer of our first Shakespeare production: Julius Caesar. Most of the actors and actresses are my own children, except for "faithful Becca," a family friend who has been a part of all our plays. We performed this play upstairs in our home on a homemade 2x4 stage. Every child had to play multiple (2 or 3) roles.
Julius Caesar Trailer
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL JULIUS CAESAR PERFORMANCE
HENRY V - JUNE 2011
For our second play, we moved the performance to Damascus Road Church in Marysville, WA (www.damascusroad.org). We were able to invite more guests, and we enjoyed a real stage and lighting. Also, our neighbors, the Nelsons, joined the cast, so fewer actors had to play multiple roles.
Henry V Trailer
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL HENRY V PERFORMANCE
MACBETH - JANUARY 2012
For our third play, we performed again at Damascus Road Church and used many students from our new homeschooling co-op at the church. Also, my faithful Paduan Samantha joined us in the role of Witch #1 and Drunken Porter. My oldest children, Caleb and Sophia, wrote and choreographed an original song and dance for the "Double, double, toil and trouble" scene (you can hear the music as background to this trailer.) We enjoyed our largest audience and also performed at a senior-citizen home in Arlington.
Macbeth Trailer
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL MACBETH PERFORMANCE
INTRODUCTION
Hello everyone, I’m Mr. Klomparens, a Latin and English teacher at the International School of Communications in Marysville. On Thursdays I teach Latin, Greek, and Hebrew here at Damascus Road Christian Co-op; my wife Amy is the director this play. Because the purpose of our performance tonight is education and not just entertainment, I have written a few introductory remarks to help you get the most out of it.
Tonight’s performance will be our 3rd Shakespearean drama in a cycle of 10. Just last week I announced to my public school classes that my kids were performing Macbeth here at Damascus Road Church. Trey, one of my Latin students, wanted to know why we were performing, quote, “that play” in a church. So, for Trey, I’ll give a few reasons. Four centuries have passed since Shakespeare was born in Stratford, England, and this playwright still has the power to capture the imagination of a new generation just as he did our parents and their parents before them.
This may be especially true for the Christian, because, as Shakespeare scholar Thomas Carter notes in Shakespeare and Holy Scripture, “No writer has assimilated the thoughts and reproduced the words of Scripture more copiously than Shakespeare.” Also, the Christian may be captivated because the Bard lived in an era of classical learning and furious Bible translation, so his mode of thought and expression would be particularly familiar to those who know the words of the King James Version of the Bible.
Our Christian ancestors also bear witness to him. According to Peter Leithart, Christian author of The Brightest Heaven of Invention, “for many in an older generation, the Bible and the Collected [works of] Shakespeare were the two indispensable books.” Of course, we cannot place Shakespeare on a level with the inspired word of God, but if an argument can be made that anything should be watched, or read, apart from Scripture, then certainly one of the strongest arguments could be made for him. Because of this, our little co-op here at Damascus Road Church lets him share the curriculum with the Christian languages, and we believe that memorizing copious portions of Shakespeare has helped our students form both their linguistic and moral sense.
As you watch tonight’s tragedy, a story rooted in a real Scottish king who took the throne in the 11th century, note the transformative power that sin has in changing Macbeth from a hero into a villain. Refrain, however, from the temptation to judge him too quickly, and reflect instead on the covetousness in your own heart and your own need for Jesus Christ. Without him, your head would be fixed on a pole like Macbeth’s at the end of the play. Finally, because Shakespeare’s drama is saturated with a Christian worldview, when watching our play it may be useful for you to make the following biblical comparisons: 1) The witches, known as the “weird sisters” in the play, in their misleading use of language and their false promises are very much like the serpent in the Garden of Eden: See how they behave in this role as tempters and deceivers. 2) Macbeth and his Lady, in their vaulting ambition and their precipitous fall from innocence into temptation, are very much like our progenitors Adam and Eve. 3) Malcolm, the son of the king, and Macduff both suffer the death of those around them, but ultimately overcome evil and restore righteousness to the kingdom. Consider them the “Christ” figures of the play.
Please remember, the average age of our small cast is around 10. These are not trained actors, but children who have diligently trained their young minds to memorize significant portions of difficult, dense, blank verse. Please forgive the occasional foible and enjoy their play. Thank you.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - JUNE 2012
Our fourth performance had to shift venues because of Marysville's Strawberry Parade. A fellow teacher, Brandi Garcia, generously offered her church, Calvary Fellowship, to the CLC. This performance introduced more original music composed by Caleb and showcased our finest cast to date.
CLC: Much Ado About Nothing Promo from Joe Klomparens on Vimeo.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE ENTIRE MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING PERFORMANCE
INTRODUCTION
Hello everyone, I’m Mr. K, a Latin and English teacher at Marysville’s International School of Communications. On Thursdays I teach Latin, Greek, and Hebrew at Damascus Road Church on State Street in Marysville; my wife, Amy, is directing our play. Because the purpose of our performance tonight is education and not just entertainment, I have a few introductory remarks to help you get the most out of our play.
Two years ago we started the Christian Language Center in our home with the vision of filling our children’s minds with beautiful Christian language, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Shakespearean English, so, we began by staging a performance of Julius Caesar, and tonight we will be performing our 4th play, Much Ado about Nothing.
This play is full of Christian imagery, themes, and archetypes. As Shakespeare scholar Thomas Carter notes in Shakespeare and Holy Scripture, “No writer has assimilated the thoughts and reproduced the words of Scripture more copiously than Shakespeare.” This afternoon, I’d like you to leave the play considering the following three biblical truths.
The first is contained in this saying of Jesus: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” We see this principle at work around us in nature as plants grow in the spring and die in the fall, only to give life to a new generation of plants after them. We see it in the animal kingdom as one generation passes away and a new generation of children replaces them. We see it in the movie Gamera vs. Guiron, when Gamera must die and sink to the bottom of the ocean before he is reborn to conquer his enemies.
We see it with Jesus, who died for the sins of the world so that those who believe in Him might be reborn as little children and have eternal life. We also see it in our performance today, when Hero, the daughter of Leonata, dies and comes back to life at the end of the play. Watch how through her death and rebirth, new life is born and new families are formed.
The second truth from Scipture is that death brings forgiveness for sins. It is Hero’s death in the play that brings forgiveness for Don Pedro and Claudio’s sin in accusing and publicly humiliating the innocent girl. Although Hero did no wrong, like Jesus, she forgave those who harmed her and offered herself in marriage to Claudio, who had caused her death. In this way also Jesus died to save us whose sins killed him, and afterward he, like Hero in our play, united himself with the church as his holy bride, purified of sin by His death.
The third truth from Scripture is found in Genesis when God said “It is not good that man should be alone.” God made a woman for Adam to be his helper and companion, his second half who together with him would form “one flesh.” Shakespeare’s play celebrates the beauty and desirability of marriage, from the beginning when the soldiers return from their war with the desire to find wives and start families, to the end when Benedick finishes the play with the exhortation to Don Pedro: “Get thee a wife!” As the Bible says, he who finds a wife finds a good thing.
Keep these spiritual truths in mind as you watch the play: man was designed for marriage, death brings forgiveness, and death brings life. Please remember, the average age of our small cast is only around 10. These are not trained actors, but children who have diligently trained their young minds to memorize Shakespeare’s beautiful, difficult, dense, blank verse. Please forgive the occasional foible and enjoy their play. Thank you.
TWELFTH NIGHT - FEBRUARY 2013
For our fifth play we performed Shakespeare's comedy of mistaken identities, Twelfth Night. For this performance we were back at Damascus Road Church. Caleb wrote three original songs for the play. Charity got sick the night before, and Calvin got sick the day of the performance. But the show had to go on.
Twelfth Night Trailer
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL TWELFTH NIGHT PERFORMANCE
INTRODUCTION
Imagine our Western tradition as a road with 2000 mile-markers along the way from our present day to the time of Christ. If you know Latin and Shakespeare, all 2000 years of that Christian, linguistic tradition lie before you in one continuous, unbroken path. Take away Shakespeare, your road is 500 miles shorter. Take away Latin, 1500 miles shorter still. Take away both, and your linguistic journey ends 1900 miles short of Christ. That is one reason we study Shakespeare.
Yesterday, the Christian Language Center performed Twelfth Night before a nearly packed house at Damascus Road Church in Marysville, WA. Isaac Hull, our Captain Antonio, delivered his line, "Sebastian, how have you made division of yourself?"to a big laugh (our Sebastian and Viola, while wearing identical outfits, could not, in reality, have looked more different!) He wondered what was so funny about his line and realized, for the first time, that he was not asking Sebastian what he had been doing all the time they had been separated (i.e. what 'diversions' he had been pursuing), but rather how he had made a copy (a 'division') of himself. By performing Shakespeare, what happened with Isaac happened hundreds of other times throughout our semester of practices.
Our students internalized the language of Shakespeare, really understood it, made it a part of themselves, and began to reproduce its vocabulary and rhythms outside of class. A traditional, analytical classroom reading of Shakespeare does not make him a friend in that same what that performing him does. When you listen to Shakespeare, you know that you are in another literary world. When you read Milton or Chaucer or Defoe, you see that their world is the same. They lived in a world permeated by the patterns of Latin language, vocabulary and grammar. That is one reason why their language, although English, seems so foreign to us.
It was my own knowledge of Latin and of Shakespeare (fully developed through performances like this) that finally made texts like Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare himself as accessible as J.R.R. Tolkien or Lemony Snicket. If you have worked those complex grammatical patterns of Latin and Shakespeare into the deeper synapses of your brain, when you hear "Sebastian, how have you made division of yourself?" you instantly translate this, with no effort or pain, into "how did you make a copy of yourself." In short, the world of Shakespeare and the literature that precedes our own century no longer offers obstacles and roadblocks, but opens before you and welcomes you on its path. The King James Bible is as accessible and comfortable as as the NIV, and the road to 2000 years of Christian literature stretches out before you. As a Latin and English teacher at a local public school and a teacher at the Christian Language Center which meets here at Damascus Road Church on Thursdays, I want to welcome you all to tonight's performance. Our mission at the CLC is to fill our students’ minds with beautiful language, thus our Shakespeare performances, with a focus on the languages of the Cross, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. We do this as a co-op, so our students only pay dues or fees to cover the cost of the classes. Most of our actors are homeschoolers who take many classes here, like Latin, history, and writing, but others come just for Shakespeare, so if you have any budding actors in your family, come talk to us after the performance.
Tonight’s play is a family production. Most of our actors have multiple siblings in the cast. Their moms have contributed various props, costumes, and other services. My wife, Amy, is our director and costume designer. My daughter Sophie, choreographed our dances. My Son, Caleb, wrote the original music for this play. Their grandmother, Jan, helped create our sets and the beautiful jester costume. God has always been a family of Father, Son, and Spirit, so we like to promote activities, like this one, which bring families closer together.
Another mission of the CLC is to make Shakespeare enjoyable to a wider audience. I remember back in college when I spent a summer at Oxford and bought season tickets to a series of Shakespeare performances. It always took me at least twenty minutes to adjust to the language and understand the basic plot. So I’m hoping with this little introduction I can reduce that time for you to about 5 minutes. So here we go.
First, the setting. The play is set in a single town of Illyria, a country just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. The action moves between two households in this town, the palace of Duke Orsino and the home of Lady Olivia.
Just as there are two main households in the play, there are also two main storylines. The first involves multiple cases of mistaken identity that revolve around a pair of twin siblings named Viola and Sebastian. Shakespeare got this idea from the work of the Roman playwrights, Plautus and Terence, who more than 2000 years ago wrote plays in Latin which were very much like the one you are about to watch. Through a variety of circumstances, the twins end up in the same town wearing the same clothes. Duke Orsino and the Lady Olivia think Viola is a boy named Cesario. When her brother Sebastian shows up, everyone thinks that he is Cesario. It’s all very comic and confusing. In short, the Duke loves a woman named Olivia, Olivia does not love him, and the twins get caught in the middle. That’s one half of the play.
The other half concerns three characters in Olivia’s household: Olivia’s cousin, Sir Toby Belch, her maid, Maria, and her proud servant, Malvolio. Malvolio cares only about himself, his ambition, and his rules. He is, as Olivia says, “sick of self-love.” Malvolio reminds me of Dwight from The Office or of Javier from Les Miserables. He is the character in the play who represents the Law of God in the absence of faith, grace, and love. He cares about nobody but himself and his rules. Toby Belch, on the other hand, is the unrepentant sinner in the play, constantly drunk and partying to the dismay of his cousin, Olivia, and his fellow servant and friend, Maria. Maria is the gospel in this story, conquering the law, Malvolio, who would have destroyed Toby if left unchecked. In the end, it is Maria’s love for Toby that defeats Malvolio. In response, Toby repents of his sin, turns from his drunkenness, and marries Maria. The love of the gospel saves him and, in the end, vanquishes Malvolio from the house.
So, to get the most out of the play, remember: two households, two identical siblings, and one legalistic servant. Also remember, the average age of our small cast is only around 10. These are not trained actors, but children who have worked diligently to memorize Shakespeare’s beautiful blank verse. Please forgive the occasional foible and enjoy the play.
LIST OF PLAYS
JULIUS CAESAR - JANUARY 2011
HENRY V - JUNE 2011
MACBETH - JANUARY 2012
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - JUNE 2012
TWELFTH NIGHT - FEBRUARY 2013
JULIUS CAESAR - MARCH 2019
You can download our abridged, high-school script, with announcer lines and stage directions, here. This script preserves the language of Shakespeare, but reduces the play length to about 90 minutes. If you use this script, please acknowledge the Christian Language Co-op in your production. Thanks!
HAMLET - JANUARY 2014
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM - JUNE 2014
ROMEO AND JULIET - DECEMBER 2015
MERCHANT OF VENICE - MARCH 2016
THE TEMPEST - MARCH 2017
TAMING OF THE SHREW - MARCH 2018
MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM - JUNE 2014
ROMEO AND JULIET - DECEMBER 2015
MERCHANT OF VENICE - MARCH 2016
THE TEMPEST - MARCH 2017
TAMING OF THE SHREW - MARCH 2018
JULIUS CAESAR - MARCH 2019
You can download our abridged, high-school script, with announcer lines and stage directions, here. This script preserves the language of Shakespeare, but reduces the play length to about 90 minutes. If you use this script, please acknowledge the Christian Language Co-op in your production. Thanks!
Senior Play Junior Play
MACBETH - JUNE 2020
Covid year! No live performance!
TWELFTH NIGHT - JUNE 2021
HENRY V - MARCH 2022
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