Mauro Sheridan Prospers With Prospero

The band room at Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School was full of students getting into their costumes, changing into sailors and spirits, monsters and magicians. They donned robes and fixed their crowns of flowers, then congregated onstage.

“How does everyone feel in their costumes?” asked co-director Justin Pesce.

“Good,” said one student. ​“Hot,” said another. If they were all still wearing masks due to Covid concerns, it was a detail; what mattered was that, after two years, Mauro Sheridan was mounting its 2022 production of The Tempest, in collaboration with Elm Shakespare Company, in person.

The show runs at Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School on June 7 and June 9 at 6 p.m.

“It’s been a huge adjustment” in getting the in-person program up and running again after a Zoom-only production of A Comedy of Errors in 2021 and a filmed version of Cymbeline in 2020, said Jodi Schneider, who coordinates the Mauro-Sheridan Shakespeare program with Sarah Bowles, Elm Shakespeare Company’s education director. But ​“they’re doing really well.”

Schneider said that Mauro-Sheridan has faced the same kinds of challenges that so many schools have dealt with since they reopened, from behavioral problems to truancy to students just facing a hard readjustment in catching up, socially and academically. ​“I can see that it’s challenging for them to be back,” she said. ​“But when they’re here, they’re great. This is a place where they feel really safe — where they’ve built a community.” That community has stuck together even as some students graduated out of the program without having said goodbye in person, and a host of new students have joined. They still wear masks on stage to protect themselves and one another.

The community the students have made for themselves is mirrored in the relationships the program has with the institutions around it. Mauro-Sheridan remains in full support. The theater program at Hopkins created the set for the Mauro-Sheridan production and Southern Connecticut offered access to its costume department, as in years past. 

Moreover, in the next two years the program will be expanding, thanks to a grant from the Seedlings Foundation the program secured last month. ​“It was unexpected, and it’s really great,” Schneider said. Next year, ​“we’ll be able to replicate the program in another school,” and the funds will then allow them to put on a production in a third school the year after that. Elm Shakespeare will be expanding its own education department to accommodate the growing program, which will also include a journalism component.

But for now, the program’s energy is focused on The Tempest. Luna Candelario, who plays Caliban, has been with the Mauro-Sheridan Shakespeare program for four years, and did acting gigs before that; she won a prize for best kid actress in New Haven’s 48-Hour Film Project. ​“That was my first time delving into theater,” she said. The Shakespeare program was ​“a way to focus on it in school, because we didn’t have a theater class until this year.”

She found navigating Shakespeare’s language to be easier than she expected. ​“I’m such a bookworm that big words aren’t intimidating,” she said. ​“I just say them with confidence — even if I don’t know what they really mean,” she joked.

Rehab Rajoui, who plays Miranda, started with the program during the pandemic. ​“It was hard to act on camera,” she said of the virtual performances. ​“If you needed props, you had to get them yourself, and improvise a lot.”

Both agreed that it was ​“really nice” being back, an unleashing of pent-up excitement. For Rajoui, it will be ​“my first time performing in person.” Candelario talked about the thrill of stepping backstage again; ​“all of the fond memories came back” of pre-pandemic performances. They also confessed to feeling a little pressure — ​“this is the first play people are seeing now that they’re back,” Candelario said of the students at the school. ​“We have more to uphold than if it had been another year.”

Stephen Julien, who plays Prospero, also declared live theater to be a welcome change from doing it over Zoom. Live, he said, ​“you can feel the energy.”

All three are graduating Mauro-Sheridan this year; Rajoui will be going to Hill Regional Career High School, Candelario to Hopkins, and Julien to University High School of Science and Engineering in Hartford. The year has gone by quickly for them. ​“We’re back, and now we’re leaving,” Candelario said. They wonder about what the effects of missing two years of school will be. ​“I feel like high school is going to be a copy of middle school,” said Rajoui.

“Hopefully people in high school will be more mature than that,” Julien said.

“You would hope,” Rajoui said.

“I want to come back,” Candelario said of supporting the program after she has graduated. ​“I want to help. What I’ve taken away from all this is teamwork. Just being with a group and learning how to act within a group was such a great experience.”

“I know Shakespeare helps me a lot,” Rajoui said. Like many people, she was nervous talking in front of crowds of people, and being in theater has boosted her confidence. ​“Performing moves me away” from being nervous, she said. ​“You’re literally being someone else, so you can perform freely.”

Rajoui’s comment aptly sums up the performance of the Tempest. Julien is a commanding Prospero, the wizard who rules the island on which the action of the play takes place. Rajoui is a wistful Miranda, daughter of Prospero who may have found a love interest among the people recently shipwrecked on the island. Candelario rages as Caliban, plotting to usurp Prospero with the aid of other shipwreck survivors. Edie Stoehr sparkles in her role as Ariel, one of Prospero’s servant spirits.Marquez Savage is stately and dignified as Ferdinand, Miranda’s love interest. Keldan Aronsen delivers laughs as Stephano, a drunken butler who plots with Caliban, and Reuben Gitelman fully inhabits Gonzalo, advisor to Alonso, Queen of Naples, another shipwreck survivor and Ferdinand’s mother. But the play’s triumph belongs to everyone; Mauro-Sheridan’s Tempest a fast-moving, high-action take on the play, with cast members throwing themselves into their roles — filled with the energy of being in the theater again, and rushing toward whatever next year holds.

The Tempest runs at Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School on June 7 and June 9 at 6 p.m.