Oldtimers Amongt The Young

For the past two days those of us who give financial sponsorship of the students studying drama at the Asolo Conservatory are invited to watch members of the first and second year class demonstrating some of the skills they are working on at school: movement, voice, acting.  The audience surrounding them in the practice rooms where the demonstrations take place is largely persons in their sixties and seventies with a few such as myself extending up into the mid eighties.  It is a thrilling experience for persons such as myself to see young men and women jumping, turning somersaults, landing on their feet in straight upright position, not even swaying.  Bodies in their strength and sureness are so beautiful; the skin of young people is a glistening shimmering thing once faded, never to return.  The instructors patiently explain what they are getting at with the exercises. I particularly like hearing the voice teacher talking about how the voice is made by the whole body; it seems like something we can all do to improve our projection.  One of the acting classes is devoted to Shakespeare, some recite the sonnets, others perform scenes.  There are the teacher's favorites.  Yesterday for the third time I watched and listened as Richard III menaced and cajoled the widowed Queen Ann across the dead body of her husband as she struggled with weakness and resolve in the face of this monster.  Young people seem to get younger and younger and Richard and Ann are no exception: such as the contemporary cultural demand of the exercise room that one gets Shakespearean royals buffed and trim, and of course so very very young, but then in real life the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge look a helluva lot better than their forebears did.  In the intensity of all the acting gives these youngsters a gravitas that their youth denies them.  Some very convincing moments were enacted.  The other acting class required improvising with some lines furnished the performers on the spot.  Their various inventions were amazing, especially since there were always two persons and each had to improvise to an impromptu response of their partner.  It has been a thrilling week, and we capped it by taking the student we sponsor and his fabulous lady friend, another student, out to dinner and listened to them talk of what they had been doing and we had been witnessing.  Sponsoring a student is the highlight of our Sarasota life.