University Communications

Author of the recently published There Are No Shortcuts (Pantheon, 2003), Esquith credits his father with instilling a love of Shakespeare in him while he was still a toddler. "My father would read the plays to me during my youngest years, and I loved them. I didn't understand everything, but it didn't matter. I thought they were great. I literally knew who Hamlet was before I knew who Goldilocks was."

His already evident zeal was only heightened when he studied Shakespeare at UCLA with Senior Lecturer David Rodes — "a wonderful teacher who showed me that Shakespeare wasn't so serious a pastime."

Esquith, whose endless energy and love of teaching has made him a star in the K-12 education community, says that his philosophy is simple: "A good teacher must bring to the classroom what he loves. I say to teachers, if you love gardening, then garden in class. The students will see your enthusiasm. I just happen to love Shakespeare."

THE HOBART SHAKESPEAREANS will perform Hamlet this summer and, in doing so, they'll come to understand more about the beauty of the English language than most native speakers do.

"Imagine you live in a world where everyone's agreed to say something in the most exquisite way possible," says Dragicevich. That is the world of Shakespeare.

Dragicevich teaches acting, but not the kind that most modern theater students expect. Instead of the methods of Stanislavsky or Strasberg, he teaches students to approach the classics with a classical sensibility.

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