Harvard Group Gives Voice to Shakespeare

Lovers of Shakespeare, look no further. A new student group for those infatuated with the Bard has sprung up at the College.

The as-yet unnamed new student group meets one evening a month to read one of Shakespeare’s works aloud. On Feb. 27, they tackled Julius Caesar.

Few of the students in the group have any theatrical background. Some of them don’t even study literature. What characterizes the group, headed by Andrew P. Winerman ’04, who is also a Crimson editor, is its relaxed attitude.

“There are no requirements to come,” he says.

Likewise, the atmosphere of the reading is cheerful and low-key. Students sit in comfortable easy chairs around the wooden table, munching on mints and cookies, waiting for their turn to speak.

“It’s just something people do to enrich their lives,” explains Winerman, himself an applied mathematics concentrator.

The idea behind the group began when Winerman heard about a group called the Old Cambridge Shakespeare Association. Founded in 1880, the Association’s members also meet once a month to read a play. A casting committee notifies them of their roles beforehand so that they can prepare if they wish.

Winerman thought the idea was great, “but they don’t let anyone in under like, 40,” he says. Instead, with the help of graduate student Jon D. Stainsby, he organized a student version of the illustrious organization. E-mails go out with role assignments, Kirkland House provides refreshments, the Harvard Theater Collection subsidizes scripts.

“It’s very important that everyone be reading from the same edition,” says Frederic Wilson, the collection’s curator. Wilson, himself a member of the Old Cambridge group, was the person that Winerman originally went to for help in getting the project off the ground. “Andrew’s group is modeled very closely on [the Association],” he says, “and it’s a worthwhile thing to do.”

With logistics out of the way, Winerman and Stainsby are now focusing on reaching a wider audience. “It would be great if more people from across the university could come, especially freshmen,” Winerman says.

Most of the participants are juniors.

Winerman says he has no immediate plans of going to the university to make the group official. “I really like this as a chill organization,” he says. “Maybe next year, to assure that it’s continued, but for now I don’t want to get into the bureaucracy of it.”

Winerman does admit that running the group “is kind of a pain in the ass sometimes.”

“It’s always hard to get people to do anything ‘academic’ during the semester,” says Zachary M. Subin ’03, one of the group’s members.

The reading Feb. 27 lasted about two and a half hours, including a ten minute intermission. At the end, the group spent about 15 minutes discussing their impressions. The discussion topics ranged from Brutus as a Machiavellian figure to Roxanna K. Myhrum ’05’s assertion that “Chaos just runs around a lot, and I like that.”