The Shakespeare at Winedale program was originally the brainchild of Dr. James Ayres, an English professor at the University of Texas. Every summer for more than thirty years he took fifteen to twenty students out to the UT Winedale Historical Center property near Round Top, Texas, during July and August to put together productions of three Shakespeare plays.

In 1990 my class did As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, and Henry the Fourth, Part I. The students were usually liberal arts or hard science majors with little or no acting experience. There were no tryouts (and no drama or theater majors). Ayres interviewed candidates in his office, more interested in filling the open slots each year with specific personality types according to his own inscrutable criteria than with proven acting experience.

“Words,” Doc Ayres would say. “Words are what make this work. That and work. I run all this, but I don’t direct the plays. Nobody does. There’s no stage manager. No blocking. We don’t have rehearsals, run throughs, or ‘do shows.’ What you do here is perform. You perform every time you get up on the stage and every time you’re working on scenes outside while somebody else is using the stage. It’s up to you to figure out what these plays are about. I’m not here to tell you. Sure, you’d like me to. And so at some point all of you will hate me for not telling you. I don’t care. The only thing that matters here is getting the plays ready on time.

“You’re wondering how all this works. You do it. You read the texts and figure out what’s happening in the plays and then you do it. Sounds simple now. It gets complicated fast. Remember, everything you need to know is in the words. You just have to dig deep enough.”

I never had any illusions of being an actor. Honestly. I was there because I was a semester away from graduation after eight years on and off in school as an undergraduate, and I’d never done anything particularly interesting. Living in Austin was fun—groovy bars, passable blues bands, and cheap Shiner beer—but I wanted to collect something more from college than a degree and an unhappy wife. Winedale hadn’t been my first choice (studying at Oxford for the summer) or even my second (a German language school in Taos) but it was the least expensive, just a hundred dollar lab fee in addition to six hours of tuition.

Our first Saturday night we performed the first two acts of As You Like It, as far we’d gotten during the week. Ayres gave us permission to go through the old costumes in storage that afternoon to jury-rig costumes appropriate to our characters. After we slopped through the play Ayres called us back into the theater. He told Jon, cast as Orlando (the male lead), to stand onstage.

“Look at that boy up there,” Ayres said.

We looked at the boy.

“What do you see?” he demanded.

I smelled a trap. My radar was well tuned at that time—being unhappily married can do that for you—and at that moment I made a vow to myself to say absolutely nothing until this whole scene had played itself out.

“C’mon,” Ayres said. “What can you tell me about Orlando based on the way Jon’s dressed?”

Jon had on a white headband, white Fruit-of-the-Loom T-shirt, and little white BVDs showing through his little white tights that were tucked into his white Chuck Taylor Converse All-Star high-top basketball shoes. The boy was white, the whitest white boy any of us had ever seen.

There was a wary silence, but then answers began trickling out, starting with the obvious.

“Uh, he’s white.”

“A symbol of good.”

“Yeah, purity.”

The class began to pick up steam.

“His heart is good.”

“He’ll triumph over evil.”

This went on for a while until someone said he was just like the Lone Ranger and then Ayres cut them off. I’d volunteered nothing.

Jon smiled, proud at the fact his costume had been so evocative and effectively interpreted.

“Well,” drawled Ayres, “I’m impressed y’all got so much out of Jon’s costume because all I see is a boy standing onstage in his underwear.”

Dead silence. Jon’s self confidence withered up and blew away right in front of us. He looked like he was about to cry.

“You people don’t have a clue,” said Ayres. “You think Shakespeare has characters so one dimensional you can define them by wearing a single color?

“Do you?” he yelled. “You think Shakespeare has little 3×5 cards running around with names and color schemes printed at the top masquerading as characters? Huh? Anyone? Do you, Jon?”

“No sir,” said Jon.

“So what were you thinking?”

“I guess I don’t know.”

“I guess you don’t either. Everything you need to know about Orlando is in the words. Right now all you’re doing is ignoring the text, just slopping some bullshit meaning on it that isn’t even there.

“Actually, I do know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking eventually I’ll take pity on you and your pathetic non-effort and then I’ll tell you what it is you’re supposed to be doing. Well, let me tell you, mister, it’s going to be a long wait. And, that’s the kind of lazy shit that’s going to ruin all the hard work being put in by everyone else. That’s what you want?”

“No sir,” said Jon.

“All of you are so weak! Does anybody have something to say about this?”

Ha, I said to myself. Ha.

Jon, to his credit and being braver than I’ll ever be, raised his hand and said, “I do.”

“I’m waiting,” said Ayres.

“Well,” said Jon. “I just want to apologize to everyone here. I really thought that I was doing the right thing. But I think Doc’s right about the fact that we need to get it together and up to speed so we can get some real work done. C’mon, you guys, I know we can do it. We just have to pull together. But we can do it and make this the best summer ever.”

A few of the girls spoke up to agree with Jon. I stared at the red-clay floor and smiled.

“That’s very nice,” drawled Ayres and it got quiet. “Let me tell you something. I think pretty speeches are real nice. But what counts is work, not some cheerleader up onstage mouthing nice sentiments.”

He got up to walk out of the barn and I was thinking, Woo-hoo! I am a man! I am number one! Nobody punked me! Now I looked around at my classmates and smiled openly at them.

Then, right at the door, Ayres turned around to say, “ Oh, and by the way, I just wanted to say how  . . . proud I am of all of you who were too chickenshit to volunteer anything at all.”

Then, he strode out of the barn.

Really? Oh my, I thought. Really.

(Adapted from the essay “Words Alone.”)

So when was the exact moment you realized learning was not spectator sport?

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