The English department is taking a trip to the American Shakespeare Center during spring break, from March 20 through 22. This is the 11th year the department has held the trip. Students will stay in the Stonewall Jackson Hotel in rooms with two queen beds in the “heart of Staunton,” Dr. Amanda Hiner, associate professor of English and trip director, says. The price per night with the education rate is $125, so it is beneficial to room with other students to reduce the cost.
“They can expect a really fun, exciting kind of event packed weekend,” Hiner says.
On the trip, students will watch four plays by professionals, take two interactive educational workshops, attend a lecture by the founder of the American Shakespeare Center Ralph Cohen and have a backstage tour of the playhouse. In their free time, students can explore Staunton, VA. “[It is] a beautiful, walkable city, and so a lot of students go to chocolate shops and get gelato and coffee and fun things like that as well,” Hiner says.
The theater is located in Staunton, VA at the American Shakespeare Center. The Blackfriar Theater is a recreation of Shakespeare’s indoor theatre. “It is a gorgeous intimate theatre [with] beautiful wood and a gorgeous wood stage and hanging candelabras,” Dr. Hiner says.
This year students will see “A King and No King,” “Henry IV Part I,” “Henry IV Part II” and “Much Ado About Nothing.” The trip is open to students in all majors, both grad and undergrad, as well as friends, family and roommates. To get there, students can take a van driven by a faculty member, carpool or drive themselves. For those that would need to take the van, Dr. Hiner says, “we are providing free transportation to the first ten students who register. That number could go up a little bit depending on how many we have registered.”
The long hours in the van allow the faculty members and the students to really connect according to Dr. Casey Cothran, department chair and associate professor of English. “I love being in a car with students, and we talk about the four plays, which were our favorite and what we liked about different ones,” Cothran says. “It is so nice to be able to do it outside of a classroom space and to really just have casual fun, humorous conversations. I don’t have to grade anything. I don’t have to look to make sure that students picked up certain answers that I have to test them on later. We can just enjoy having a conversation about a piece of art that we enjoyed together.”
“I remember last year, there was this really powerful play that was presented that was a new play that had never been performed before,” Hiner says. “[It] was kind of bouncing off of a Renaissance era play, and it was just so powerful in its content we were laughing, we were crying and then just being able to talk about that experience afterwards with students was really wonderful. It creates a lot of great memories for us.”
Carson Pender, an English major, has gone on the trip four times. “Some of my favorite moments from the trip are actually the ones where Dr. Hiner, other students, and I are traveling to and from Staunton.” Pender says.
Pender says her favorite moment came after she saw the play, “Hamlet.” “A woman came up to me after the show and said, ‘it was so rewarding watching you respond to the play. You looked like you were having so many emotions and really enjoying yourself.’” Pender also enjoyed the workshop where students were able to sword fight.
“I think with Shakespeare, especially when reading the plays, the need to understand what the characters are even saying comes before enjoying the thrill of the plot. Seeing the shows performed as they were meant to be performed really changes your perception,” Pender says.
The English department at Winthrop is text-based, with some concentration on performance. “I think for English students in particular, it is really a joy to kind of step a little bit outside of just a more English focused way of looking at a text and talk about what it feels like to be in the audience or to experience the performance,” Cothran says.
Hiner shares the same hope when students go on this trip. “What I hope this does is really bring theatre alive for students,” Hiner says. “It is incredibly enriching to an English major or really someone in any discipline to kind of see how these plays came alive, how they are enacted and staged, and especially in the focus on historical accuracy, learning and understanding how plays were presented and performed during the Renaissance and Restoration, learning about stagecraft in that period, learning about costuming choices and acting choices. It turns the literature from words on a page into a real life, very visceral, real experience for them.”
“Theatre is incredibly demanding and difficult,” Pender says. “There is always something to be gained from learning about Shakespeare’s plays as performances as well as literature. Shakespeare ultimately wrote largely political and emotionally-driven works that have framed satirical, social justice, and aesthetic approaches to literature.”
The English department also offers several other trips. The Greek mythology class is a semester class that ends early and takes students to Greece on a 10 to 14 day trip during break to see “where the oracle is said to be and the different sites in Athens associated with Greek gods,” Cothran says. There is also a class on American writers in Paris focused on F. Scott Fitzgerald and Earnest Hemingway.
“[Students] spend 10 days or so in Paris going to the sites where they wrote their novels or where they lived or where scenes take place in their works,” Cothran says. This fall, the English department offers a class on Holocaust literature. “Over the break, you will travel to various sites in Germany and then also the delightful Christmas markets to pull you up after you go to the concentration camp,” Cothran says.
Traveling as an English major can be very beneficial for numerous reasons. “The more you live the easier it is to write as well. For creative writers, it is always good to experience new things because then they can put that to their work,” Cothran says.
The registration and $40 deposit is due on Feb. 3rd. Then on Feb. 21, the second payment which is $80 is due. This brings the total cost of the trip to $120. To pay go to this link: https://secure.touchnet.com/C20256_ustores/web/store_main.jsp?STOREID=44.
You can also email Dr. Hiner at hinera@winthrop.edu or Dr. Cothran at cothranc@winthrop.edu. Those that want to pay in cash can stop by Bancroft 250 and fill out a registration form there.
Photo provided by Dr. Amanda Hiner
