RETURN TRIP TO OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL

 

During the first week of June 2009, NSU students will again have the opportunity to study plays in live performance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. This year’s trip is the result of requests from students who took the course in 2008.  Bixby senior Joy Carr, for example, described last year’s trip as “the best academic experience I’ve ever had.”

            Students attributed their enthusiasm to the high quality and amazing innovation of the performances, the excitement of group discussions before and after performances, the sessions of interaction with members of the acting company, the spectacular beauty of the Cascade Mountains, and the camaraderie of sharing this adventure for a week with other students.

This year’s group will see productions of three Shakespearean plays (Macbeth, Much Ado about Nothing, and Henry VIII), two new plays (Bill Cain’s Equivocation and a new adaptation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote), Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman, and either Meredith Willson’s The Music Man or Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone.  

Sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and the Department of Languages and Literature, this educational experience is scheduled for May 30-June 6, 2009, the week before NSU’s regular summer term begins.  The cost of the trip is $1150, including round-trip airfare, ground transportation, dormitory housing, breakfasts, theatre tickets, and educational sessions with the acting company.  The deadline to sign up for the trip is March 24.

Dr. John Mercer, professor of English at NSU-Broken Arrow, will lead the group again this year.  Students will earn three hours of undergraduate credit in English, Humanities, or Theatre, or three hours of graduate credit in English.  Tuition and fees are in addition to the cost of the trip. 

For more information, contact Dr. Mercer at 918-449-6541 or mercer@nsuok.edu.  Documents related to the trip can be found Dr. Mercer’s faculty Web site: http://arapaho.nsuok.edu/~mercer.  A trip blog is at http://sashakespeare.blogspot.com.