For the past three years AHS English teacher Mrs. Michelle Schnell has taken her Honors and Advanced Placement senior English students on a theater trip to Denver. This past Sunday her students made the trip to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and watched what is probably Shakespeare’s most famous play, Romeo and Juliet.

Every year Mrs. Schnell’s students wait to see which Shakespeare play the DCPA is featuring then read and study the play before making the drive to Denver to experience Shakespeare’s words coming to life. Three years ago her students read the comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream then watched a rather traditional, period-authentic version of it at The Denver Center for the Performing Arts. The following year her students read another comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, then watched a rather non-traditional version of it which was set against a western background. This year, instead of a comedy, The Denver Center for the Performing Arts was showing, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Since her students had all already read Romeo and Juliet as freshman and were all very familiar with it, Mrs. Schnell chose another tragedy, Othello, for them to read and study in class. They also read A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The version of The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet presented by the Denver Center was very traditional. The Denver actors, as always, did a fantastic job portraying the characters Shakespeare created hundreds of years ago. This year’s play was very serious and, though it was broken with humorous lines from the characters of the Nurse, Mercutio, and the leads, Romeo and Juliet, there was a definite undertone of dismal tragedy.

Mrs. Schnell said the reason behind taking her students to see a Shakespeare play is because Shakespeare’s plays are supposed to be experienced live, not through a novel. “They were not meant to be read. They were intended to be viewed. I want more students to appreciate Shakespeare and students don’t get the full understanding of his brilliant words through reading them in a book,” Schnell said.

This year, Schnell’s students got more than just a play, they also got an overnight vacation of sorts. The group got stuck in Denver due to bad weather and even worse roads. They stayed at the Curtis Hotel after driving seven and a half hours to get to Denver, at times going only thirty miles an hour. Schnell said, “The road conditions were nerve-racking to say the least.”

The adventure was worth it and Schnell’s English students enjoyed a timeless play in downtown Denver in the middle of a snowstorm. One senior who traveled with the group was Senior Dawson Johnson who said of the play, “I have always wanted to see a play and now I can’t wait to see another one.”