[Narrator] Support comes from Landmarks, the Public Art Program of the University of Texas at Austin, inspiring new ways of seeing, with the belief that great art should be free and accessible to all.

More at LANDMARKSUT.ORG.

[Narrator] Tiny Hearts Project is on a mission to increase the prenatal detection of congenital heart disease.

We train clinicians in the proper techniques for prenatal cardiac screening.

Information is available at tinyheartsproject.org.

[gentle music] - The words, the words, the words, that's one of the things he loves to say, the words.

It just was the words, the breeze, the Texas air, the darkness of the barn-- that's all it took.

[gentle music] - At the beginning of the summer, the barn had been closed up and you open things up.

We sweep the dirt floors and clean everything, and we start pulling out chairs and you set up the dressing rooms and you create these worlds.

And then at the very end, you take it all down, you put it all back in boxes, you sweep everything down and you close.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ [John Rando] The number one thing was the location, the barn itself.

That was the number one thing that got me excited about going to Winedale.

The second thing was Shakespeare, and just studying Shakespeare in this intense, brilliant way.

And around the clock, you know, 7:00 AM to midnight, Shakespeare.

And then there was this wonderful smart man who knew how to teach with such gusto and love of the text.

- Doc is a stern taskmaster, you know?

And so he expects as much out of you as he expects out of himself which is a kind of legendary amount.

[gentle music] - Shakespeare was not man to be read and studied in universities, our school, it was meant to be performed for an audience.

- Shakespeare Winedale is a class on life, really, but rooted in the English language.

- Shakespeare play reading criticism and performance.

And I said, "Oh, that sounds good, you can read the play, and you can read critiques of it and then you can watch the performance."

So I signed up for it and then I started reading the little blurb after I'd signed up for it.

And it says something about us performing.

And I said, "Well, that could be fun I guess."

- This is not your typical classroom!

And we're not sitting behind a desk and we're not reading and then discussing the literature, we are the literature.

- At the college level, it gave you strength and self-knowledge and now Camp Shakespeare with the younger students-- they're so lucky.

I wish I had had that time.

- Because Doc identified Shakespeare as the vehicle because he knows it's everlasting and ever-changing, it's the perfect tool for him to keep communicating with youth.

- So, what we would like to do is just take eight minutes, hug your student real hard, check for that cell phone, pat them down, [crowd laughs] make sure they don't have it.

All right, go hug these people, they're gonna miss you a lot.

- I think that asking 10-year-olds to 16-year-olds to work on Shakespeare is opening up new vistas.

I think that we're solving the right problem in the right way when we say, "Yes, you're gonna work on something that represents the greatest artistic achievement of the human species and we're gonna do it with a spirit of play.

And it's gonna inform everything that you choose to do after that.

And you're gonna derive joy and you're gonna develop lifelong friendships."

Yes, it's appropriate for 10 to 16-year-olds.

- So this is an invitation right now, this first night altogether for you to be open and willing to the experience that's about to take place.

And what that requires is a lot of self-love and acceptance.

We hope that this will be a journey where you find yourself questioning things, and challenging yourself and confronting those challenges.

You're in a wonderful position in your life as young adults, you're discovering yourself, and it's something that you get to face kind of head on in this environment.

You don't have to shy away from it.

And we're really excited to be a part of that with you.

- Each one of you has a special gift, and we're going to see that.

- A lot of the students I think arrived with the same questions that I had, "What do you mean we're doing a three-hour Shakespeare performance in two weeks?"

- I do wanna point out that when anybody speaks, you please look at them.

You don't look idly at all.

These people have a great deal to tell you, very important things to tell you.

And it's good to respect them by attending to what they say.

Yeah.

[clucks] Right?

Right.

- Every person in this room is going to contribute something unique and exciting to the world of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

And we like to call the way that we work on the play, play.

We get the students' applications in, we take the time to put that class together, then we match them to their roles and we try to mail them out their texts as fast as we can, because in addition to standing up and performing your lines, you as a class are creating the entire world of the play.

- Let's roll.

[Robin] Okay, jump up there.

Good, good jump, all that energy.

- Drice blessed David masters so their blood, to undergo such a maiden pilgrimage.

- Such maiden pilgrimage.

- To undergo such maiden pilgrimage, okay.

Either to die the death or to abjure forever the society of men.

- Unto his Lordship whose unwished yoke my soul consents not to give sovereignty-- [Doc] Ella, can you say, un-wish-ed.

- Oh.

[Doc] Ella, slow down, Ella.

You have to have a starting point of some kind.

When we find the starting point for each of them, we start building.

- War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, making it momentary as it sounds.

- Let me stop you here, momentany as it sounds.

Not momentary, means be the same thing.

- How happy some or other some can be.

- O'er, it really is o'er.

And language is very very rich, the sound of it.

The end of the line is very important.

The rhythms are very important.

- The raging rocks and shivering shocks shall break the locks of prison gates.

[Doc] It's the most intimate of all experiences in teaching because you actually get to hear and see interpretations instantly.

- So technically, it's just an English course, but in reality, it occurs at Winedale, Texas in this property that was donated Ima Hogg to the university, and they brought all these historic buildings onto the land.

But on the land was the barn and at least by legend, Ms. Ima came to him and said, "I want you to do Shakespeare in that barn."

And she wheeled her wheelchair through the red dirt into the barn.

[gentle music] - Ms. Ima Hogg as the daughter of our perhaps only socialist governor ever, James Hogg.

She's an empress in my regard, She's very regal, other people have called her that too, because she's elegant in every way.

In 1970 in a receiving line, I was introduced to Ms. Ima Hogg.

Uh, and uh... [sobs] [gentle music] I was just in the right place at the right time.

That invitation changed my life.

It just shifted everything.

And you know, all she said to me was, I want you to do Shakespeare in the barn.

And that's where Shakespeare at Winedale was born.

I was there a month later.

[crickets chirp] [Robin] Hi, how are you?

- Hello.

[Robin] Welcome to the land of green chairs?

Okay.

This is a place of yes, 100%, your whole body, every cell and molecule and tiny little creature that lives within you has come to the space to participate.

Ever since you were a tiny little egg before you hatched open and became a little being in this world, you wanted to say yes to the circle.

What does yes look like?

It is full body.

It is commitment to the dialogue, and the weird creatures, and the strange things that are happening in the scenes around you.

So everybody close your eyes, find that tiny no cell in your body and say, thank you so much, I acknowledge your presence, and I release you and you may go somewhere else.

Let's say, yes, everybody, every time.

Welcome to improv.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ - You do lots of, kind of improv exercises.

And that just gets you in the moment.

It just wakes you up and get you in the moment and you kind of get on a roll.

You know, if you think too hard about it, you can't do it.

If you don't think about it or you're distracted, you can't do it.

You've just gotta be right there, in the moment.

- It might be uncomfortable right at first, you know, to look at a young child and say, why are you hesitating?

What are you afraid of?

But you've also just given them the space to figure it out, to really go, I don't know.

Am I feeling uncomfortable?

Am I feeling insecure?

Camp really plopped them down and it's like, we're gonna challenge you as a person, as a human being.

We're gonna ask you for two weeks to work creatively and collectively with a group of your peers non-stop, like a family.

- Most challenging thing would be that we all learned the lines and how to say them separately.

And hide me in the brakes, and leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts.

- When you're learning them, you start to think of them in one way.

And at camp they challenge you to think outside the box and try new ways all the time.

- I grant you friends, that if you should... - I would say the most challenging thing is figuring out who you want your character to be.

- The challenge was to embody these characters and the world of the play.

That sounds abstract, but it is not easy.

- I remember when I played Bottom, I didn't know how to get the character, you know, I thought, okay, he's a little too silly.

And of course, Dr. Ayres would say, "He's a lot like you."

So one day I'm sitting there studying the lines with someone else, Doc comes in with the rattiest pair of cowboy boots you can imagine, and he just dropped them next to me.

He said, "Wear those boots.

That's gonna tell you how to do that part."

[crickets chirp] [indistinct chatter] [Woman] Welcome to Camp Shakespa.

[gentle music] This is a very soothing time in your camp career.

If you've seen the Phantom of the Opera, he has a mask sort of similar in shape and size.

It will come down under your nose, through the cheeks but not over the mouth or the jaw or the chin.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - My mother was about six months pregnant with me, We were American military in Germany.

My mother developed a kidney infection and they shot her full of an M-Mycin antibiotic that they knew would cause harm to the fetus, but it was all they had.

When I was born, everything looked fine, but by the time I got to Fort Hood, Texas, in the elementary schools there, they discovered that I was deaf.

When I was in high school, I had a wonderful, wonderful theater and speech teacher.

She would take my hand and put it on her throat so I could feel and put it on hers and back and forth, so I could feel inflection.

So she taught me how to inflect and she taught me how as best I could to enunciate.

So I go in, and the counselor he gives me a brochure that read, "errors and all factory work make good job for deaf."

I got this little scholarship, I go to the University of Texas.

I go to the theater department 'cause that's what I wanted to do, I loved it, that I was learning.

So I thought an institution of learning.

So I go and I take my little scholarship and the guy says, you're deaf, we won't let you on the stage.

So go to the costuming.

I saw this Shakespeare class and it was like the study of Shakespeare by performing it.

And I took that class and he, he told me that it didn't matter that I couldn't enunciate because what he saw was that I got it.

You know, I felt it and I could do it.

And so he loved me for it, also 'cause I was funny, I would do things like fall in the mud and throw myself down flights of stairs, and, you know, I like to get filthy and muddy and do stuff and he loved it.

He loved that impulse because that was how he felt about Shakespeare.

You know, that was, it was to live.

[gentle music] I felt at home and I felt like I could do anything, anything, and it would lead somewhere wonderful.

You know.

I, um...

I wanna weep,[laughs] because I was safe.

[gentle music] [Students] One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, one, two, one, two.

One, one, one.

[Robin] All right, ready for it.

[Students] Chocolate shake.

- Oh, methinks how slow this old moon wanes.

[Doc] Where is it, where's that moon, Sam?

- Okay, but oh, methinks how slow-- [Doc] You gotta get-- - This old moon wanes.

[Doc] Start your speech over.

You can't just pick the fragments up, you can't.

Ella, you've got to concentrate on what's next.

- Okay.

[Doc] And they're your vows build and that your vows build from we've already been over that.

Yeah, something has to happen here and it's not happening.

- I don't think for most people, he gives them more than they can handle.

For some, he probably does.

For most, he sets it out of your reach, and you wanna reach it.

- Keep rolling slow.

But look here comes Helena.

- We ought to be glad to see Helena, we ought to be happy to see Helen-- Here comes Helena, that's great.

That's other good news, isn't it?

Yeah, instead of going... [Robin] Yeah, it's real-- - You look like, what's she doing here?

- He set up boundaries in so far as he expected us to work hard.

He expected us to be real with the texts and pay attention to the words.

He, by his example, expected us to be wholehearted about everything, and that is one of the most important things is that, his wholeheartedness as a teacher and as a sort of lover of Shakespeare modeled wholeheartedness for the rest of us.

- Living in Austin in the seventies was very much about the war and watching the Watergate hearings and being full of your sense of righteousness as a young person.

- 1974, Nixon resigned while we were at Winedale, Doc came in and told us, he said, "Nixon's going resign."

- We all gathered in the general store there next to the pool table to watch this little TV, with Richard Nixon's resignation speech.

- Doc cautioned us to be respectful of the other people there because we're a bunch of kind of hippie-ish liberals and these were conservative German farmers and things.

And he said just be respectful of the moment, it's serious.

- And I was so excited.

I ran out of there in the raging storm.

I ran up to the top of the roof and decided to slide down the roof and I broke my leg.

Doc was so angry, he was so mad at me.

The other students thought it was great.

In fact, when I came back from the hospital and went to perform, they told Doc they wanted him to dedicate the performance to me.

And he said, "I am not doing that.

This guy should never been on that roof, I could be in big trouble for this, I am not doing it."

And he did it anyway.

- The group of people that year in 75, this was the most creative group of people I've ever experienced anywhere in my life.

- One of the wonderful things was when we did Much Ado About Nothing.

It was so Shakespearian, it was so meaningful, it was so community-based, the marching band from Brenham High School, wearing polka-dotted outfits, people from the store, Marilyn and Rollie in the play in some of the silliness with Dog Berry.

A parade to the front of the barn, Terry Galloway, who played Dog Barry on top of a horse, or at least commuting with the horse.

- That play is so much about everyday people.

It's so much about us.

The subtext is dramatic, it was about families, it was about friends, it was about social structure.

That play is about the lives we lead and how we have to adapt and coerce and cajole each other into going to the next step.

I mean, we were so into it and I think it was also a play in which those particular students, a lot of them have been with Doc for a long time like me, that we found ourselves.

[gentle music] - The group process is really important.

And Doc always talked about this kind of mystical thing we called ensemble.

This idea that somehow we all come together and working on one thing and we all know what each other's doing, and you can feel it when it happens it's just, everything is just clicking.

It's just magic, that's the magic.

- Shakespeare taught in this way and experienced in this way, changes lives and deepens kids understanding of the world.

Shakespeare is the world.

[clapping] - Welcome to "Play's the Thing".

And we're gonna have a big crowd here today, which is very exciting.

♪ The summer first was Lee ♪ - Every experience we have as humans, we attribute meaning to it.

Play allows us to access that creative energy that makes meaning.

Doc started that in me, but it took me 35 years to figure it out.

- What's up Doc, I know I'm late.

- Take off your hat please.

[crowd laughs] - So my morning starts, you know, like an average morning, I wake up-- [Doc] Wonderful.

- And it was, I had a drink of, no, there was things floating.

- I had a conversation with Doc and, and basically said, you know, I have this idea, I'd love to use the Winedale model to create a space for children with chronic illness and life-threatening illness, to explore their grief and their loss of independence.

And he said, we have to do this.

- No, no, no, I'm sorry, The fish were not sore, that'd be really silly.

- We started doing improvisations and then we would take scenes from different plays and play with them.

- I've always been into theater.

Sixth grade I did a theater camp and that was my first introduction to Shakespeare.

It's always been a struggle for me deciding if I should audition or not.

And whenever I can get to it, it's always a nice outlet, it's a nice escape.

My first time experiencing "Play's the Thing", it was wonderful, it was really amazing going from in a hospital room with nothing around me, really, to being surrounded by wonderful people who love theater.

- Show me thy chink to blink through with mine eyne.

At first, it was a little overwhelming.

Quickly, I had really forgotten that I was in the hospital.

I felt like I was back at school and I was in theater class and we were just having fun.

And I roar.

I missed a lot of school.

I only went to like 30 days of eighth grade and I missed half the year of seventh grade.

Didn't really get to do too much, and that's why the "Play's the Thing" is wonderful.

It's once a month.

If I can make it there, I can make it there.

If not, I'll make it to the next one.

[upbeat music] With being chronically ill in a messed up lifestyle, you never know what to expect.

And Shakespeare, there's a lot of loss and there's a lot of death and there's a lot of murder and action.

And there's a lot going on in his plays.

It does help.

Who's here?

It's an interesting kind of mindset to get into.

How can it be?

There are times where I'm lucky to be alive myself.

It gives me a new perspective on that.

- As Shafalus to Procrus, I to you.

- O kiss me through the hole of this vile wall.

- I kiss the wall's hole, not your lips at all.

[Doc] Got to kiss her first.

- I love theater with every fiber of my being like I love it, I can do it every day if I could.

- And farewell friends, thus Thisbe ends.

Adieu, adieu, adieu.

- She's dead!

[crowd claps] - They really jump in and start playing and just be silly and take risks, which Doc always encourages whether we were at Winedale or Camp Shakespeare or "Play's the Thing" is to feel like free to take risks, stick your neck out, just try something.

- This round is pierce.

- Play allows their creative energy to begin to assign meaning to the experience of their chronic illness.

Plus it's allowing as Doc would say, to have fun, they're having fun.

- They can enter this room, use whatever's going on into their character and work with it, and mold their chronic illness may mold their emotions into something beautiful.

And I would love to continue this program one day.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Ooh.

♪ ♪ Aah.

♪ - Go, go.

♪ Aah.

♪ ♪ Ooh.

♪ ♪ Aah.

♪ - Ready for it.

- Chocolate shake.

- And pluck the wings from painted butterflies.

To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.

Nod to-- - We really are approaching the phase of camp where there's a transition or a shift.

As we go through the first weekend, the play very quickly starts to become their own.

So the way we describe it to the students is that the staff, we start taking more and more steps back.

- Your name, honest gentleman?

- Peaseblossom.

- I pray you, commend me to Mistress Squash, your mother, and to Master Peascod, your father.

[Robin] Good Master Peaseblossom, I shall desire.

- Good Masterpiece Blossom, I shall desire you of more acquaintance too.

Your name, I beseech you sir.

- Connor is not off book for bottom's dream speech or five one, so he'll have book.

But we spent this morning, an hour this morning, working on five one.

- There will be no lines given in the second part of the play, you have to navigate it and figure it out.

No uhms or uh, try not to repeat words.

If you were on stage and you were in character and another player in that scene does not know the line, you know this play.

And now you must help navigate the story to get us back on track, does that make sense?

- But I should use thee worse, for thou, I fear, hast given me cause to curse.

[indistinct] me cause to curse.

For though, I fear, has given me cause to curse, if thou has slain Lysander in his sleep o'er shoes.

- I think being vulnerable, and I think having a moment where you all look at each other, the staff is looking at you, you're looking internally at yourself, you're looking at the other actors in your play.

All of a sudden all those children feel like this is what I was called to do, this is my purpose, and it's time to do it.

- It was just kind of thrilling to be in that environment and can be completely submerged with these people and then you'd go, boom, right into rehearsal.

And the rehearsals were so interesting because you would rehearse with Doc, your scenes, at the same time other people would be rehearsing with their scene partners elsewhere with no leadership.

So you'd be bringing stuff into the barn that you'd been developing and working on, but you had no idea if it was working.

- Dr. Ayres gave us the place and the space and he had the wisdom to just give us parameters and let us go.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - I can remember my very first real lesson with Doc, probably the most important lesson of my college career.

It was a monologue.

It was, there's not a man I meet, but doth salute me as if I were a well acquainted friend.

That's the headline of the monologue.

I went to the back of the barn, Doc had this great big desk and he had the script, and started to break the speech down and just showed me that opening sentence and said, this is classic rhetoric, renaissance rhetoric, in which you try to persuade someone.

Now, who do you persuade?

You don't have anyone to persuade, you're speaking on the stage by yourself.

You persuade the audience to understand your inner life and this kind of lesson, one-on-one breaking the script down, it was a kind of watershed, that taking the time to do that with me, and I would read it back to him and he would go back to the text, show me that rhyming scheme again, show me the word meaning, it's the lesson that has helped me do my craft now that I'm a theater professional and working as a director, and I'm forever ever indebted for that one moment.

And then there were many others, many, many others.

You know, you were constantly deeply thinking about language, rhetoric, role-playing, all the real core things that Doc was teaching about living in Shakespeare through performance.

- Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

- Love can transform.

There's change, that is in effect hopeful.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind and you're wrong, of course, but that's what you say.

- As she is mine, I may dispose of her.

- I don't think you have to go out turn to look at her.

As she is mine, I want this.

- As she is mine, I may dispose of her.

- There's the obvious process of being on stage, and learning how to project and have your voice carry to the back of the room.

And that could be helpful in a crowded courtroom, for example, where it's really helped me I think, as a lawyer and my profession in my life generally is understanding the importance of words, and how words can be nuanced and how when they are delivered, they can be delivered in ways that are uplifting, that are demoralizing sometimes just by changes in inflection.

- With her parsonage, her tall personage, her height, forsooth, she hath prevailed with him.

And are you grown so high in his esteem because I am so dwarfish and so low.

How low am I, thou painted maypole?

[Crowd] Ooh.

- You're kind of shaping this whole thing with your personality.

- Look at this, I know you're gonna die if you don't, but I'm gonna get married.

- Yeah so yes, yes, exactly right, you're over full of self affairs.

That may be the controlling force, right?

Okay, good, good, let's go, get over here.

- Our sides.

- Oh, oh.

- Voice and mind.

Then in foreprint.

- Let's see.

Oh, we got so pretty, isn't it?

Yeah, rub his head.

[laughs] - We cannot forget we are at play.

This is not about us being actors.

This is about us understanding the text through the play.

But it's also about this presentation of self in everyday life.

How we play roles in everyday life, in every moment of our lives with each other, and with ourselves, and that is key to who we are.

♪ Then sigh not so, ♪ ♪ But let them go, ♪ ♪ And be you blithe and bonny, ♪ ♪ Converting all your sounds of woe ♪ ♪ Into hey, nonny, nonny ♪ - One of the traditions is the sing for your supper.

So at meal times, which are obviously part of the rhythm of every day, is these meals that you gather together for.

And we sing for our supper.

♪ ...was ever so ♪ ♪ Since summer first was leafy.

♪ - It's all about circles at camp, we're always getting into a circle and we end the two weeks in a circle.

We come together in a circle and we invite the students to understand that it's only the beginning.

That camp Shakespeare is something that's theirs forever.

- The way you come on with your voice, very important, 'cause you wanna set a standard for the others.

- Set the standard but then also set it as a comedy for the rest.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We're not going to stop you.

Our goal here is not to stop you today.

[Robin] No repeating, no stumbling.

- And then I mentioned the lights will go out.

- Yes, right, full lights today.

If your first entrance doesn't happen for a while, then you're standing right back here on the vestibule, solo by yourself, going over your first speech.

All right, here we go, ready break.

[Students] Chocolate shake.

- Quick, quick, moving with intention and purpose.

[gentle music] [drum beats] - Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour draws on apace.

- There my Lysander and myself shall meet.

Farewell-- Farewell sweet playfellow, pray thou for us.

- I will discharge in either your straw-color beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard.

- Before milk whites.

Now purple loves wounds.

Anoint his eyes, but do so in the next thing he spies, is but the lady.

Thou shall know the man by the Athenian garments he hath on.

And look thou meet me ere the first cock crow.

- You're not my Lord, your servant shall do so.

- We're gonna stop, we're gonna stop the play right here.

Everybody on stage, please.

- Quick please, with more energy than we've seen all day.

- So what's happening to the play?

Of seven days, we work very hard on words and we stopped you and said, oh, why did we emphasize this?

Where are you going in this line?

Yeah, and you answered.

And we made some progress with that.

And now today you say, oh, progress to hell with that, throw it out.

Where's the excitement?

Puck, you've got to wake up your puck and you can't tell me you're paying attention when your head is down, and you're looking at the floor and something is happening over there, I don't believe that.

Where is the concentration, the focus?

You're a team, you were a team yesterday.

You're not a team today.

Ella, I talked to you already about it.

Ella looked like you're half asleep.

You have one expression Ella through the whole play.

The pace is so slow, you can put everybody to sleep.

- You have to participate for your sake and for the person standing next to you and for the whole arc of the story.

Right?

- We've talked enough, we wanna do.

[Robin] So circle yourself, do what you need to do.

- Do you wanna do a shake out?

- There you go.

- Yeah.

[Students] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, one, two.

One, two, one, two.

One, one, one, one.

[gentle music] - Ready, break.

[Students] Chocolate shake.

[gentle music] [thunder rumbling, rain falling] [gentle music] - I went to the Army when I was 18.

But I still had braces on so they made me wait till January of 2001.

Went to Afghanistan, 2003.

And we're gonna leave in 2004.

That's what deployment terms were.

You're doing all sorts of things, you're raiding houses, that means kicking in doors, pulling security, setting up perimeters, pushing things out, lying in ambush lines.

You take prisoners, I think our battalion send two people to Guantanamo.

In November of 2004, I leave my duty station and I drive to Austin.

I didn't do well in high school at all, so I couldn't get to the University of Texas right away.

So I went to Austin Community College for a year and a half, then got into The University of Texas.

Within two weeks in, I got called back into the Army.

This time to deploy to Iraq.

I'd been toying around with writing a bit, I wanted to learn more about verse.

So I read two Shakespeare plays while I was in Iraq, Hamlet and Macbeth.

2008, I'm back at The University of Texas.

And he wound up letting me into the program.

I guess what I thought I would do, because I didn't have any performance experience or real Shakespeare experience I kind of thought I would like, I don't know, carry buckets of water and like, say a line like, here's your book my Lord, if I had to say anything.

It was a rough start at first, but I think I started to get the hang of it as it went along, and that summer we did "Richard III'.

That's a history play, very violent.

At one point, you drag prisoners on the stage.

I was doing that, once I was up on stage, I realized like that was the same hold that I used for detainees.

This was a rehearsal but the difference was that in a few weeks people were gonna be watching this.

Whereas when we were Afghanistan, nobody saw it.

The fact that people could see this, that was the first time I really got theater.

You can see the audience, you can feel them out there, especially in Shakespeare.

Just as crucially to me is that the audience can feel each other and sense each other, and the different way that they react to things.

So I've been working on a novel about Afghanistan for a while.

I rewrote it that summer as a play, they recruited most of the kids that were in that summer Shakespeare class, they did the play and then they shared it with an audience, and the audience could see each other reacting to these moments, what it means to take a detainee, what it means to bring somebody down, what it means when somebody gets shot up, when a US soldier gets hurt.

Shakespeare at Winedale changed my life.

I started out not interested in theater, not much for verse, not believing that Shakespeare should be done live necessarily.

And now I focus on live performance.

I write plays.

I do it professionally.

And it changed the way that I think that art can be made within the community.

I work with military veterans quite a lot, when they learn Shakespeare, these veterans who didn't think that they were a part of maybe high culture that Shakespeare is often associated with, find themselves in it.

I don't think Shakespeare romanticized it, I think he makes it bearable because, I think he makes it just beautiful enough to be bearable.

[birds chirping] - We have three more days together.

So what we'd like to do is take a minute and everyone close your eyes.

And I really want you to think about what you love about yourself.

[gentle music] And then we would like you to share with the group.

And if we get letters from you down the road, or we see you, or you forget, we will always hold that for you and remind you what you love about yourself if the t-shirt can't do it.

- Sophie, little beacon of self help.

- Thank you.

I love my spirit of creativity.

- What I love about myself is that I can just bring hope and joy to people that are around me.

- Yes.

- My quirky personality.

That's the right word, okay, yeah.

[clapping] - Chose to be knighted.. [laughing] ♪ Ahhhh ♪ - Okay, okay.

- I also love that I like seeking out people who don't have as much confidence in themselves and giving them a little bit of confidence.

- I think optimism.

[Students] Yeah, yes.

- I think it's simple as that, optimism?

- What I really love about myself is by desire to learn, and thank you all for teaching me.

What I really love about myself is that I am not going gentle into that good night.

[students laughs] - It's been the greatest blessing of my life to be in camp and to learn from each of you, and to get to know Doc and really think of him as one of my best friends and closest friends, along with this group.

We're the weirdest group of friends.

- You're a gem, you really are, you're absolute wonder.

I value your judgment probably more than any person I've ever met in my life.

And I love myself because I love you so much.

[students laughs] - All that love lives in this shirt, and it lives in this space and it lives in you.

Okay sweets, the next few days are different.

We're turning the corner.

- And, since we have the vaward of the day, my love shall hear the music of my heart.

- There again, I say.

- Meet presently at the palace.

Every man look o'er his part.

- Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade [indistinct chanting.]

- Okay, let's go back to where I'm.

- We have to work on the lines a lot.

And most of them got pretty challenging because we have to keep repeating them over and over and over until we got it perfect.

So that kind of, tested us.

- I must admit that I have heard so much.

- Too fast.

- Oh dangit!

I must confess that I have heard so much.

- The struggle is as important as anything else in it.

It's not easy, what they do is not easy.

How do you paint a picture when you're inside of it?

How do you do that?

You have to have a patient brush.

[clapping] - One of the things we tell the students over and over again is that this will never happen again.

The chances of you all being together in a room ever again are so slim.

♪ Ah, ah, ah ♪ ♪ Eye ♪ You'll be different, you'll be different people, the play will be different.

So this is it, this is it.

You're right in this moment and thinking about what's about to take place, so you get to your places and you put yourself in the world, all right?

There's a lot of counselors who've come before us, and they always used to tell the students that you have everything that you need, inside of you already right now.

All right?

So you have to dig down deep into the belly of your own self, touch it, remember it, nurture it, and celebrate it one last time all together.

All right, have fun, ready break.

[Students] Chocolate shake.

- When you have the facility to understand Shakespeare and deliver Shakespearean words and perform, it gives you power.

It empowers you, it empowers you with the feeling that you can take on almost anything.

[trumpet blows] - Our nuptial hour draws on apace.

Four happy days bring in another moon.

But oh, me thinkshow slow this old moon wanes.

- Stand forth, Demetrius.

My nobel lord, this man hath my consent to marry her.

- I besiege your grace that I may know the worst that may befall me in this case if I refuse to wed Demetrius.

- You have her father's love Demetrius, Let me have Hermia's.

Do you marry him.

- Scornful Lysander, true, he hath my love, and what is mine my love shall render him.

And she is mine.

- If thou lovest me, then steal forth thy father's house tomorrow night and in the wood a league without the town there will I stay for thee.

- Answer as I call you.

Nick Bottom, the weaver.

- Ready.

Name what part I am for, and proceed.

- You Nick Bottom are set down for Pyramus.

- What is Thisbe, a wandering knight?

- It is the lady that Pyramus must love.

[laughs] - Nay, faith, let me not play a woman.

I have a beard, coming.

[crowd laughs] - Square, that all their elves for fear creep into acorn cups and hide them there.

- Either I mistake your shape and making quite, or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite called Robin Goodfellow.

- And for her sake, do I rear up that boy?

And for her sake, I will not part with him.

- Do I entice you?

Do I speak you fair?

Or rather do I not in plainest truth tell you I do not, nor I cannot love you?

- And even for that do I love you the more.

- Aarrg!

- I am your spaniel.

- Be it ounce, or cat, or bear, pard, or boar with bristled hair, in thy eye that shall appear it is thy dear.

Wake when some vile thing is near.

- ♪ The ouzel cock, so black of hue, ♪ ♪ With orange-tawny bill, ♪ ♪ The throstle with his note so true, ♪ ♪ The wren with little quill ♪ - What angel wakes me from my flow'ry bed?

- How can these things in me seem scorn to you, bearing the badge of faith to prove them true?

- O, how ripe in show thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!

That pure congealed white, high Taurus' snow, fanned with the eastern wind.

- Why should he stay whom love doth press to go?

- What love could press Lysander from my side?

- Lysander's love, that would not let him bide Fair Helena, who more engilds the night than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light.

Why seek'st thou me?

- Lysander, whereto tends all this?

- Away you succuvist.

- No, no, he'll seem to break loose.

Take on as you would follow.

- This beauteous lady Thisbe is certain.

This man with lime and roughcast doth present.

Wall, this grisly beast which Lion hight by name.

The trusty Thisbe coming first by night did scare away [roars] or rather did affright.

[roars] Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast.

[crowd laughs] - Dead, a tomb must cover thy sweet eyes, these lily lips.

This cherry nose, these yellow cowslip cheeks are gone, are gone.

Lovers, make moan.

[wails] - And, as I am an honest Puck, if we have unearned luck now to 'scape the serpent's tongue we will make amends ere long.

Else the Puck a liar call.

So good night unto you all.

Give me your hands if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.

[crowd clapping] [crowd cheering] [gentle music] [Doc] We shall not cease from exploration.

And the end of all are exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

[gentle music] - By the end of the summer, we felt super human.

I felt like I could do anything.

- There's nothing like it and you feel so connected.

You know, wow and wonder you feel so connected.

- We see each other and it's like, no time has passed.

We're still the young kids that we were.

- We have to say goodbye.

You did well today, all of you did well today.

You've been on this journey and you reached the end of it, but we have never looked upon the end as the end.

We have looked upon it as the beginning.

Each of you is going a different way right now.

And we know that you will be in touch with one another.

So what we want you to do is if you've had a wonderful experience or you had, you realize something that you haven't realized before, we want you to take that out into the world.

- I wanna thank you for making a space where you became self advocates.

A safe space where you were able to express your love of self, and I hope you know what that felt like.

And now you have to take that back out into the world.

You have to be an advocate for others.

You have to remember that when you're feeling lost or you feel like it's too buried deep inside, put on your Marigold shirt.

[laughing] And you carry the love that you expressed for yourself.

But you also know that Sophie's holding that love for you.

Harrison, Morgan, Ruby, we'll all hold that in our hearts.

[laughing] [Doc] After that struggle is ended, there's a celebration.

And the feeling for one another, and the recognition that what they have created together is more powerful than anything they have ever experienced.

And there's a bond that's made that you can't do any other way it seems to me, and it's genuine.

[gentle music] ♪ ♪ Lovers, make moan.

[students wailing] ♪ ♪ [Doc] You walk away with pride of having created something.

- Bye George.

- Bye.

- Saying goodbye to them, like sending them off to their life, you know that they've just started on this new path, and camp was a part of that.

It's never gonna go away.

Now that they've experienced it, they've faced it, then they get to keep owning it.

[gentle music] [upbeat music] - I feel like Camp Shakespeare did change me inside.

Just in overall life.

I can be more confident and have my shoulders back, chin up and just smile and I feel genuine about it.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] Support comes from Landmarks, the Public Art Program of the University of Texas at Austin, inspiring new ways of seeing, with the belief that great art should be free and accessible to all.

More at LANDMARKSUT.ORG.

[Narrator] Tiny Hearts Project is on a mission to increase the prenatal detection of congenital heart disease.

We train clinicians in the proper techniques for prenatal cardiac screening.

Information is available at tinyheartsproject.org.