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Home > Undergraduate Studies > Get Involved : Student Stories: Allyson

Student Stories: Allyson C.

The study of literature is born of a love of words. The study of theater is born of a love of words. Words have a property of exponential growth: a collection of words, a novel, script, poem, or essay, is a generator. Charging the mind with electricity, begging more words in description, in response.

Literature and theater are arenas of the imagination. An author makes an expedition into his imagination and records his findings, hoping to create something in the imagination of the audience. Reading is a private collaboration between the author, and the reader, who is audience to the relationship between the work and her own imagination. The act of creating a staged work is a public collaboration between the author, actors, director, and designers. The imaginations of each of the collaborators convene, with the hope that in this joint effort they will inspire something in the imaginations of their eventual collaborators, the audience. Each audience member collaborates with the staged work privately and publicly, experiencing an individual response in a room full of people.

I am double-majoring in Acting and English Literature, pursuing my loves for these arenas of the imagination. I traveled to London with the University of Minnesota / Guthrie Theater B.F.A. Actor Training Program. We studied at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, the London International School of Performing Arts, and with several other unaffiliated teachers. The main focus was Shakespeare. As a word-lover, it is a pleasure to study the work of a man who gave the English language some of the greatest works in the canon—along with so many words and phrases of his own invention.

We studied the First Folio with Patrick Tucker, founder of the Original Shakespeare Company in London. The Folio is victim to (some rightful) criticism for multitudinous inaccuracies: ink smudges on the foul papers, errors on the part of any number of type setters, etc. The Folio is the composite of many contributors: Shakespeare and the sources he borrowed from; other writers masquerading under his name; the type setters who printed these plays, which were made up of words they had never heard or read before; the actors who reconstructed the plays—their contributions influenced by gaps in their recollections and their own ad-libbing (who could blame an Elizabethan actor for getting creative, when he had one rehearsal to prepare his part?). Shakespeare is credited with the “invention of the human”; it is only more fascinating that in the recording of humanity Shakespeare’s work was inundated with the words of his actors and the type setters and other writers, paralleling the multi-influenced, many-authored stories of our own lives.

We used the Folio to study scenes and monologues—giving careful attention to out-of-the-ordinary notations (possibly signifying a clue to the actor, rather than an inaccuracy in the recording). Every capital letter, semi-colon, misspelling is an invitation to create rather than correct. We were given cue scripts, like the actors in Shakespeare’s time would have received. A cue script is made up of your lines, and the last three words of the line preceding yours. The construction of reality is potent—an actor enters a scene knowing only as much as the character does—what she wants to achieve, how she plans to do it. The creativity that came of these explorations resulted in some of the best work I have seen my colleagues do, and some of the best work I have done. The Folio’s imperfections are an invitation to bring your own ingenuity to the works of one of the greatest geniuses.

Finding a pursuit like the study of the First Folio confirms my hope that my love of words is being sated by my pursuit of two degrees and excites me for the life of writing, reading, speaking and hearing that lies before me. To make a life of exploring these arenas of the imagination is to indulge in the hope that good (great or small) can arise from the collaboration of the imaginations of people. To study literature and theater is to be a scholar of humanity—in studying the words of different authors, characters, the stories and myths of different cultures, we study the depth and variety of the human spirit. To be a scholar of humanity, to maintain vigilantly the hope that lives can be changed through the collaboration of imagination, is one of the noblest pursuits I know. I hope a life made of these pursuits will continue to inspire me the way it has thus far.


Photo copyright: Sotheby's

Service learning classes inspired this English major to teach in Senegal

"With service learning classes, you're not just participating in the campus environment: You're a figure outside in the community. After awhile you realize that you're making an impact...You're connecting with different people: and having all these different relationships really changes your future." 

Lyncy Y.