At GCHS, Pipa says
"Let kids play Shakespeare and let them love it"



GUILDERLAND — Michael Pipa loves Shakespeare. He talks about the Bard with passion.

His love affair began after graduate school, when a friend asked him to audition for a play.
"He harangued me," recalled Pipa. "He got me on stage. He insisted I possessed what I needed. I felt in way over my head."

But Pipa didn’t drown.

The play was an amalgam of William Shakespeare’s works and he played Coriolanus, Henry V, Orlando, and Macbeth.

It was an awakening.

Pipa had studied Shakespeare in college — his undergraduate work was at Siena College and his graduate schooling at the University at Albany — but he was bored by it.
"We just read the plays," he recalled. "It was like a game show in class."

Pipa loved Shakespeare when he started to play it. So, three years ago, he designed a course based on that for juniors and seniors at Guilderland High School where he teaches English. The high-school actors perform for enthusiastic audiences at the district’s elementary schools.

These ideas coalesced for Pipa when he attended a workshop in Lenox, Mass. led by Shakespeare and Company. He revamped his proposal for a traditional literature class into the course he teaches today.
His central idea: "Let kids play Shakespeare and let them love it."

"Transformational power"
Not all of Pipa’s college English classes bored him. He had started as a computer science major at Siena but found himself "pulling all-nighters" to read novels for a required English class.
"I love the transformational power of good stories," said Pipa.

He came to Guilderland in 1989 to teach at the middle school and worked there for a decade. Pipa is starting his seventh year at the high school, where he primarily teaches sophomores.
"It’s a great year — a year when you’re wise and foolish," he said, referring to the roots of the word "sophomore."
"It’s a year of self-discovery," said Pipa, stating sophomores face "trials and tribulations" similar to those faced by the eighth-graders he used to teach.

Identity is a major theme in his sophomore classrooms.
"You hear, ‘I have to find myself.’ What does that mean""

Pipa’s students explore that question through literature centered on identity.
"It’s hard work," he said of teaching, "but it’s a blast."
Pipa is married to Donna McAndrews, another English teacher who worked at Guilderland but resigned, he said, "to stay home with the kids until they are ready for school."

The couple have two children — a son, Cole, who is six, and a daughter, Isabelle, who is four.

Pipa gave up being Guilderland’s varsity baseball coach when his second child was born.
"I was in a vacuum professionally," he said.

To fill the vacuum, he wrote a proposal to teach the high-school Shakespeare course. He is now working on receiving National Board Certification, a rigorous process that very few teachers go through.

And, Pipa is planning a Summer Shakespeare Institute for next year. The seed for that was planted two years ago when he led students and staff in an outdoor production of As You Like It; this spring, he produced Henry V.
"We had about 40 people in full battle," he said. "It was great."
With the summer institute next year, Pipa said, he’ll avoid the "end-of-year craziness" of producing a play in the midst of final work and exams. He’s planning a trip to Lenox so the students can meet with the Shakespeare and Company actors and to the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival.
"I’d like them to see as many live performances as possible," he said.
"I don’t give them the answers"

Pipa has been a sort of missionary for Shakespeare at Guilderland, converting or inspiring the unenlightened.
He recruits students for his Shakespeare class. "Most of my kids, with two or three exceptions, have never acted before," he said. "I go to classes at the half-way point of the year and pitch it to kids."

Last semester, he had a class of 25.

The students select the scenes they want to play — mostly from Shakespeare’s comedies, but also from his histories and tragedies.
"I tell them the stories up front," said Pipa. "We look for the hot spots."
The scripts are downloaded from a website maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "They have the entire Shakespeare collection on-line," said Pipa. "It’s all in the public domain."
Once the scenes are set, he said, "The kids cast themselves. They know each story line and each scene. They know which parts are the heaviest-lined parts. Some kids want to play the big daddy role with a lot to learn. Others want a part with no lines. They can jump in at whatever depth they want."
Asked what happens if several students want the same part, Pipa said, "If someone’s not given their first choice, next time they get a chance."

Then comes the heart of the course.
"We work with the script," said Pipa. "We make sense out of the language. With the help of footnotes, dictionaries, and historical background, the kids learn to trust their instincts.
"I don’t give them the answers. They become so acquainted with their characters that they understand how to play the part...That is the great power in learning. They take real command of the language."

"Really into it"

Actors need an audience. The high-school students, having mastered their craft, become the teachers.

Once the scenes are well rehearsed, the show goes on the road to the district’s elementary schools. For many, it is their first experience with Shakespeare, said Pipa.

Altamont Elementary School has a long-standing tradition of its fifth-graders producing a Shakespearean play, using the original Elizabethan language. Since the Altamont fifth-graders put on Hamlet this past school year, they asked the high school students to include a scene from that tragedy.
"The final sword fight was more electrifying than I intended," said Pipa. "A sword went flying."

Both the actors and the audience enjoy the performances, said Pipa.
"The high-school students get to go back and see their old teachers and the teachers get to see them. Parents get to check out their kids; some of them show up at the performances, too."

At the end of the show, the high school students answer questions from the elementary students.
"The staff at the elementary school say the kids are really into it," reported Pipa.

"Imbued with a great sense of care"
"The most powerful learning experiences we have are performance related," said Pipa, "because the audience matters. If it is your responsibility to tell them the story, or to play your musical instrument, or to explain your scientific experiment, you want them to know what you know.
"You are imbued with a great sense of care. We want others to love something the way we love it. That’s the key to all the arts at every level."

At the end of the high-school Shakespeare course, Pipa asks his students to reflect on what they have learned and write about it.
"They tell the truth," he said. "They write about the risk involved in performing — first before their peers and then before an audience.
"They write about what they have gotten to know about themselves. It’s genuine. It has everything to do with the work they did...
"You stand back and just let them work. They think you have made it possible. I say, ‘Who was on the stage" Who provided the props" Who made the costumes"’"
Pipa concedes that he has had directing and theatrical experience and "can give them the confidence to go forward" but he maintains the end result is because of his students’ learning and labors.

The students Pipa recruits are from all different segments of the school, which is generally divided according to academic ability.
"My students come from the Focus program," said Pipa, referring to a program designed for struggling students, "from Regents and from AP," he said referring to those in the main state-set track and those who take Advanced Placement, college-level courses.
"They’ve never been in class together before," concluded Pipa. "They learn about each other as people. The friendships are really powerful. It’s a community."