The Enduring Magic of Shakespeare at Winedale

Shakespeare at Winedale is a program offered by the University of Texas at Austin. It began 54 years ago when Professor James B.Ayres, who was a professor in the English department and was teaching a class called “Shakespeare through Performance.”

Through the class he helped English majors explore, discover and understand Shakespeare by having them get on their feet and perform.

According to Madge Darlington, the program director, Professor Ayres (known to all as Doc) came to a reception at the Winedale Historical center in the late sixties and met Miss Ima Hogg, who donated the property to the University of Texas.

“She asked what he did, and he explained that he taught Shakespeare through performance. And she pointed to the barn, which is an old 19th century hay barn that’s on the property. And she said, ‘I want you to perform Shakespeare in that barn.’ And Doc likes to say that it was sort of like a royal command. Miss Ima was kind of a Texas royal in a way,” said Madge.

So Doc Ayres began bringing students to Winedale in the fall of 1970, where he and his students read Shakespeare’s plays and performed them.

Shakespeare at Winedale soon developed into a class at the University of Texas, and now has a spring and summer program. During the ten weeks the students stay they get six hours of upper division English credit, and they stay at the Winedale Historical Center.

According to Madge, “The students here spend up to sixteen hours a day on Shakespeare, and now we do three plays for public performances, and we have four weekends of public performances, and there’s four days of Thursday through Sunday performances, six total performances each weekend.”

There are seventeen students in this year’s program, and each student is assigned three roles, and everyone gets a lead role.

Arielle Erdburg, a participant in this year’s program, said that “Shakespeare at Winedale is an incredible experience. We came here strangers, none of us knew each other. But the way we were able to become friends so quickly was amazing. Within the first couple of days we all knew each other’s names. I mean, you spend every second with these people. The community is so great. It’s so rare to find something like what we have here, and it’s worth all of the stress, crying, and line learning. Being able to perform and seeing all the hard work you did is so rewarding.”

Arielle is a rising senior at the University of Texas, where she’s majoring in English and minoring in creative writing. Arielle found out about Shakespeare at Winedale when she was going through course selections.

“So, I was looking through the classes, and I saw that Shakespeare at Winedale was there. And I was like, “what’s Shakespeare at Winedale? That sounds interesting.” So I looked it up, and it took me to the home page. So I applied, thinking nothing about it. Madge reached out to me, and we clicked very quickly. So we set up an interview, and I got in.”

The schedule at Winedale begins with being woken up by “The Bell” at 7 a.m. Before breakfast (and all meals) it’s a tradition for students to sing for their food. After breakfast they go straight to the barn or classrooms and work on their productions, and the same schedule is repeated after lunch.

This year’s productions are “A Midsummer’s Night Dream,” “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” and “Othello.” If you would like to purchase tickets, visit their website at https://www.eventbrite. com/o/shakespeare-atwinedale- 28913573095.