Shakespeare\u2019s comedy \u201cLove\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost\u201d provides a humorous exploration of how differently men and women view romance.<\/p>\n
The Brattleboro Union High School Players present their production of the play on Friday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Oct. 18, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. in the BUHS auditorium.<\/p>\n
The Players have set the action in an unnamed Ivy League college in the 1950s-60s. King Ferdinand decides that he and his three close friends must focus on the academic life and forgo the company of women. They swear an oath to each other to follow an ascetic existence. The King decrees that all in the kingdom shall do likewise.<\/p>\n
Shortly thereafter, the Princess of France and her three ladies-in-waiting arrive on a diplomatic mission to negotiate repayment of a debt her country owes to the King. Though they are lodged far from court due to the decree, the four women are granted an audience with the King. Despite immediately falling in love with the women, the King and his three friends keep their tender feelings hidden, publicly upholding their vow. As the action unfolds, two love letters are mis-delivered, confessions of love are overheard, and the clever deceptions enacted by the Princess and her women teach the men that true love must prove itself over time.<\/p>\n
Miguell Soto, a sophomore, plays the King.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fun to play him,\u201d Soto said. \u201cI get to boss people around. My character wants to make his kingdom the wonder of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The king\u2019s three comrades are portrayed by Jason Donahue, a junior, as Dumaine; Naveen Lalanne, a junior, as Longaville; and Lotte Gannon-Kurowski, a junior, as Berowne.<\/p>\n
\u201cDumaine, who falls in love with Katherine, is not that bright, but he acts as if he is,\u201d Donahue said. \u201cHe\u2019s loyal to the king to a fault. (At one point) we dress up as beatnik poets to gaslight the women, but they see right through us and choose to deceive us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re the king\u2019s dudes, his bros,\u201d Lalanne said. \u201cI like my character. Longaville\u2019s the youngest of the four lads and very much of a follower. He\u2019s naive and doesn\u2019t really know what\u2019s going on. He falls in love with Maria. He met her before at a college mixer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBerowne talks!,\u201d Gannon-Kurowski said. \u201cI have a lot of lines. This is the first time I\u2019ve played a male character. I have to move like a very confident man and project it out to the audience. Physicality and voice all help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drea Kurowski, a ninth grader, portrays the Princess, heir to her father\u2019s throne. The character is intelligent and skeptical, but \u201cshe goes for the King,\u201d Kurowski said.<\/p>\n
Val Allen, a junior, plays Katherine, one of the princess\u2019s ladies-in-waiting, who is pursued by Dumaine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is Shakespeare,\u201d Allen said. \u201cThe mood and the tone help you understand the language. As our director says, \u2018If you know what your lines mean, the audience will, too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Malika Anthes, a junior, portrays Rosaline, another of the ladies-in-waiting. Berowne is her suitor.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s very smart,\u201d Anthes said. \u201cShe\u2019s mean to Berowne and dismissive of him although her ill feelings eventually vanish. She\u2019s judgmental, witty and sarcastic, which are fun qualities in a character.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a funny romantic comedy,\u201d Anthes added. \u201cIf I weren\u2019t in it, I would go see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Estella Walker, ninth grader, plays Maria, the third of the ladies-in-waiting.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaria is the nicest of the four women,\u201d Walker said. \u201cShe is pursued by Longaville, and they love each other. She is very proper and keeps her dignity. She reminds me of me.\u201d<\/p>\n
This being Shakespeare, there is a play-within-the-play, and subplots, one of which involves the groundskeeper, a foreign exchange student, and the exchange student\u2019s girlfriend.<\/p>\n
Anika Wiltermuth, a tenth grader, portrays Jaquenetta, a serving maid in the King\u2019s court.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is the exchange student\u2019s girlfriend,\u201d Wiltermuth said. \u201cShe is very flirty with him. She knows her place and doesn\u2019t draw attention to herself, and respectfully curtsies when she\u2019s around the nobles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dashiell Moyse, a senior, plays Costard, the clown.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s the fool,\u201d Moyse said. \u201cHe delivers the letters to the wrong people. He mispronounces words. He\u2019s an idiot in the nicest way. I\u2019m happy to do a light-hearted and comedic role.\u201d<\/p>\n
Director Rebekah Kersten, BUHS teacher of English and Theatre, chose this play for several reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve loved Shakespeare ever since studying \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d my freshman year of high school,\u201d she said. \u201cThis seemed the right time because I have several students who really enjoyed working on some Shakespeare last year, and I wanted to capitalize on that. Also, Shakespeare\u2019s plays lend themselves to flexible casting, always a plus. I knew I wanted to direct a comedy, and \u201cLove\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost\u201d is one of Shakespeare\u2019s lesser-known earlier comedies.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Shakespeare\u2019s works are universal and timeless, Kersten said, the language can be a barrier to understanding, being \u201cso different from how we communicate today. Because the central plot follows four young noblemen who decide to swear off women and focus on academic pursuits for three years, the Ivy League college system in the 1950s-60s seemed like a natural fit.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeven of the eight Ivies were all-male at the time,\u201d she continued, \u201cand there were traditional affiliations between the Ivies and the Seven Sisters colleges. We\u2019ve changed the location names to reflect the Ivy League\/Seven Sisters identities. The gents are from Hanover and the ladies are from Hadley. And I added a prologue in which we see the couples meeting each other at an Ivy Mixer at Harvard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Particularly in this time period, Kersten said, students were routinely bussed from their own college to one of the others for dances and other \u201cmixer\u201d events to socialize. Most audience members are familiar with the Ivy League, so that background knowledge provides the audience with context for the various plot points in the show. It helped the actors, as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I framed this story as a battle of the sexes on a college campus in the 1950s, that gave the actors enough access points for them to create their characters,\u201d Kersten said. \u201cThe acting style is also very different from the realistic style many students have done in other plays. Elizabethan acting is larger than life, energetic, and presentational. The actors feel proud of themselves when they are able to understand the lines and deliver them in a way that helps the audience understand them, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Shakespeare\u2019s day, Kersten added, the audience went to \u201chear\u201d a play, not \u201csee\u201d a play. The focus was on the language\u2014the wit, the banter, the emotion. The focus wasn\u2019t on the sets, costumes, or props, but on the characters and what they were experiencing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis play is all about the commitments we make in our lives,\u201d Kersten said, \u201cand why we choose to keep them or break them, and how that impacts the people we care about, for good or ill. I want people to leave thinking about the commitments in their own lives. Which ones are they keeping? Which ones are they breaking? Are they balancing their priorities in a healthy way?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Brattleboro Union High School Players present \u201cLove\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost\u201d on Friday, Oct. 17, at 7:00 p.m. (ASL-Interpreted Performance) and Saturday, Oct. 18, at 2:00 p.m. (ASL-Interpreted Performance) and 7:00 p.m. in the BUHS auditorium. Tickets $10 at the door.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.reformer.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Shakespeare\u2019s comedy \u201cLove\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost\u201d provides a humorous exploration of how differently men and women view romance. The Brattleboro Union High School Players present their production of the play on Friday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Oct. 18, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. in the BUHS auditorium. The Players have set the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2093112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[21741,356250],"class_list":["post-2093111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ovation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Loves-Labours-Lost-explores-the-meaning-of-commitment-Entertainment.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2093111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2093113,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093111\/revisions\/2093113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2093112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2093111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2093111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2093111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}