The GFS Upper School drama department will present Love’s Labor’s Lost, the densest of Shakespeare’s plays, from November 12 through 14. “The whole play is about language,” says guest director Alex Burns ’99, who has directed Shakespeare all over the country, from Texas to Chicago to D.C. “Ultimately, it’s about a simple fantasy, it’s about ideology. I love showing students who are becoming actors the power of language and emotions. Each character is trying to find his own language to ‘woo’ his partner; they’re all trying to out-sonnet one another. It’s a very heady piece.” Burns also had to exercise his imagination when he chose to modernize the production, modeling King Ferdinand after the bad-boy royal Prince Harry.

 

Love's Labor's Lost will be followed in the spring by a production of Steven Sondheim's Into the Woods, which “is a play on language and all about the imagination,” says Lisa Hemphill Burns, director of the drama department (and parent of Alex). “We think both language and imagination are under attack,” she says. “With the rise of Reality TV, texting and the Internet, kids don’t read great literature or use their imaginations like they used to. There’s a lack of communication, people speak in more clichés, kids seem almost frightened of language and don’t appreciate its richness. So we decided, ‘Let’s really examine language’ this year.”