Every weekday this fall, a group of excellent actors and actresses spend their afternoons rehearsing for the upcoming play Henry IV Part I.

Every four years a Shakespeare play is performed at Kent. This year, Mr. Stewart picked the first part of Henry the Fourth, “a play that can stand on its own,” in order to offer all four-year students the opportunity to see a Shakespeare play. Also, since this work is frequently taught in English 2, Mr. Stewart wanted to have the students who have read the play see “this show come to life.”

To pick actors for the play, Mr. Stewart conducted an audition and picked 35 qualified performers based on their skills and fit for the roles. He said, “we tried to give opportunity to everyone.”

When matching the roles with the performers, Mr. Stewart “didn’t stick very strictly to the gender,” since he wanted to arouse the thinking of viewers about the power of women. An interesting fact is that two main roles among five will be played by females. “I think it will lead to an interesting production” said Mr. Stewart.

He also claims that “there are many funny scenes as well as dramatic scenes in Henry the Fourth.” Mr. Stewart gave the funny example of Falstaff and another prince pretending to be the king and interviewing the prince. Meanwhile, there will be impressive one-to-one fighting scenes and multiple deaths in this play. To prefect the actions, Mr. Stewart himself imparted skills learned before in his career to the performers, such as the fake choke and fake punch.

Even though the play was written in Shakespeare’s time “loosely based on history,” the costumes of the characters will be more modern. This idea came from Mr. Jandreau, who is working hard with the stage crew members to “come up with creative ways to portray the show.”

This play is a three-day long performance held in Mattison Auditorium from Nov. 3rd to Nov. 5th — all are encouraged to go check it out.