It’s not every day that a high school theater class gets to perform for British royalty.
Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, were in town this March, and had a packed schedule that involved meeting with President Obama and touring local sites, including Mount Vernon. On Camilla’s itinerary was a visit to the Shakespeare Theatre Company, where she watched WS’s own Advanced Theatre 3 and 4 classes perform their own rendition of a scene from Shakespeare’s As You Like It.
“It was just a really great honor, to get to perform for someone of royal status,” said senior Catherine Ariale.
The WS theatre students performed earlier this year at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in an event called “Text Alive,” where scenes from Shakespeare are performed in alternate settings, but with the same dialogue. The Spartan team chose to take the scene they performed – Act 1, Scene 2 of As You Like It – and change it into a 1970s disco setting. A wrestling match between two characters was turned into a dance-off set to Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees, among other changes. The unconventional take was a big hit.

“People went crazy, they loved it… it got wild applause,” said theatre director Bernie Deleo.
When the Shakespeare Theatre Company found out Camilla would be stopping by, they called and asked the WS students to come back and do it again. They weren’t able to tell the students everything for security reasons, so there was some speculation leading up to the event.
“We were all excited, we were all guessing as to who it was. Some people guessed royalty,” said senior Will Shipley.
The performance went off without a hitch, dance-off and all, and Camilla and the rest of the audience enjoyed the show. The WS students, for their part, loved the opportunity to perform in such a formal setting.
“There was a feeling of legitimacy, like we were performing for heads of state,” said junior Grace Duah. “It was crazy.”
The performance was not without a bit of controversy, however. The Telegraph, a British newspaper, ran a story on the event that asserted a WS student fumbled a line in a way that gave it a bit of a less G-rated tone. The line, “Come, where is this young gallant that is so desirous to lie with his mother earth,” has a significantly different (less printable) meaning when the last word is dropped, as supposedly happened. The WS theatre department, for its part, denies all such allegations.
“I didn’t drop [the last word],” said senior Will Shipley. “I think it was a tabloid so they were just looking for a story.”
Fellow Spartans present at the scene of the alleged crime supported his story. Camilla, for her part, did not show any sign of being offended after the show, when she shook hands with the cast and crew. She complimented their performance and even asked them to perform for her again back in the UK.
“Maybe if we’re in the neighborhood, we’ll show up,” said Duah.