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ASF group makes two new stopsBy Jeff Denmon 
Alabama and Shakespeare mix to create the fifth largest Shakespeare festival in the world. On March 18 and 19, students from Georgia Highlands College attended two performances at this year-round festival in Montgomery, Ala.
However, this year’s 21st annual Alabama Shakespeare Festival trip was different because the faculty, students and their guests toured two major historic civil rights movement museums in Montgomery, the Rosa Parks Museum and the Dexter Avenue Parsonage, the former home of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Each museum told the story of a civil rights legend. The Rosa Parks Museum shows onlookers a dramatic representation of Parks’ bus incident as historians perceive it.The Dexter Avenue Parsonage is where the King family lived and has been restored to the way it looked during the time of the civil rights movement. The 56 trip-goers attended a Saturday evening showing of a stage adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” after a dinner at O’Charley’s.Lee’s tale is about a young girl who grows up during the civil rights movement. The play focuses on a trial in her town that shows her the evils of society at the time. The next day the trip-goers witnessed a performance of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” the story of Viola, who is shipwrecked at sea and loses her only relative and twin brother, Sebastian. Viola dons the disguise of Cesario, her male alter-ego, in order to obtain work and protection from the times.Before “Twelfth Night,” the trip attendees were allowed to scamper and search the multi-million dollar Alabama Shakespeare Festival complex for interesting sights. “It certainly surprised me that we were in Alabama and watching Shakespeare,” said Jeff Shirley, undecided major from Silver Creek. |