Applied Shakespeare: A Program of Possibilities

Despite growing up surrounded by the works of great authors and playwrights at her home in New York, Jill Gordon wouldn’t pick up her first Shakespearean play until her early 20s—an event that would set up a lifetime of exploration, curiosity, and most importantly, possibility. 

“My father was a small businessman in western New York, but he was a book dealer on the side, so I grew up around books and that's when I first learned about Shakespeare,” said Gordon. “But it wasn't until much later that I got interested in reading Shakespeare. It was one of life's ‘shoulds.’ I picked up a copy of “Macbeth” in a bookstore and said, ‘You know, I probably should read this.’”

Over the years, Gordon continued consuming Shakespeare’s work, with her appetite being further whet when her daughter Bianca began her journey to become a dramaturg by studying theatre at CU Boulder and working at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival for work study. 

“When Bianca was in school, I became more in touch with Shakespeare,” said Gordon. “On an almost daily basis, I heard about what she was doing.”

“I got exposed to what was out there—I started going to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival with Bianca and we attended the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I became very interested in attending the major festivals and the major theaters,” said Gordon. “Then, I started to want to do more, but I was not ever going to be my daughter. I knew I was not going to get a PhD in theater. But through her, I saw what was available.”

Gordon, now at a career crossroads after working 30 years as a flight attendant, was eager to explore the possibilities. Gordon joined The Bard’s Book Club, a Colorado Shakespeare Festival offering, then stumbled upon the Applied Shakespeare program, a graduate certificate program at CU Boulder that gave her a new opportunity to consider the ways in which Shakespeare might apply to her life.

“I thought I'd like to do the program, but I’m 100 miles away from Boulder,” said Gordon. “A lot of the time, things seem sort of impossible logistically for me.”

However, the certificate's hybrid remote/online format allowed Gordon to explore her burgeoning passion from her home in Vail, Colorado while connecting with classmates from all around the country. 

“It's beautiful, because I could study something I was really interested in without having to go out on snowy roads and put 200 miles on my car every time I went to class,” said Gordon. 

During her first course, Introduction to Applied Shakespeare, Gordon was overwhelmed with possibility when students were asked to start thinking about their capstone project wherein students create a presentation, workshop, paper, solo performance or script that intersects Shakespeare with a topic, specific population or social issue of their choosing. 

“The first course we took was really more about studying Shakespeare's plays and themes. I liked it very much, but all of a sudden we had to come up with this creative project that had to do with applying Shakespeare,” said Gordon. “I was like, ‘I'm in Vail, Colorado, what do I do?’ I'm not an actor, I'm not a director, I'm more of a scholar. I like to read, I like to write, I like to research. So, I looked around Vail which is a very cultural place. We have a classical music series, we have an international dance festival—there's a lot going on here. But what I noticed was there was no Shakespeare.” 

“One night, I went to a performance of “Tosca” that was in conjunction with the classical music series here and they performed in an amphitheater with minimal staging, using the Jumbotron to translate the lyrics of the opera,” said Gordon. “It was really engaging and really well done, and I thought I could do that with Shakespeare. A minimally staged production—but that's a big project and it costs a lot of money to do something like that. So I said, ‘How do you start small with Shakespeare? Well, you teach an introductory class.’”

With the stage production idea now just a tickle in her mind, Gordon shifted her focus to developing an introductory class called Shakespeare for Fun. While she was developing a lesson plan for the class, however, the COVID-19 pandemic struck, leaving the Applied Shakespeare program in limbo. 

The program, which culminates in a weeklong in-person intensive at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, was unable to welcome its cohort of students to campus during the height of the pandemic. During the nearly year-long hiatus, Gordon was able to take her lesson plan and put it into practice at Colorado Mountain College, officially bringing Shakespeare for Fun to life.

“People were extremely lonely during COVID, so I thought I would reach out to my population—I like to call them post-career,” said Gordon. “I decided to work on a project I was really into—making Shakespeare accessible and bringing people from all over the place together in an online community.”

Though Shakespeare for Fun proved successful and is now in its eleventh semester, Gordon continued to think back to the “Tosca” production and the possibilities for engaging audiences with Shakespeare. 

Entering stage right: Weekend with Will, a series of panels and discussions held over several days in partnership with the Vail Symposium—a non-profit organization that provides educational programs for the Vail Valley community. 

“Weekend with Will was my initial dream, my light bulb, when I saw “Tosca”. I thought, ‘God, I could do this with Shakespeare,’” said Gordon. “Before the performance, at the local interfaith chapel, the director came and spoke. He was talking about the history of the opera and I thought I would have to do that because nobody knows anything about Shakespeare, or very little. So I would include a pre-talk and I would have some kind of very stripped-down performance, because it's expensive.”

“I had to do a lot of fundraising, I called in a lot of favors. I was very lucky that enough people supported me.”

Tapping into her extensive Shakespeare network, Gordon gathered a group of scholars, actors and directors in Vail for the multi-day event. One notable person who answered Gordon's call was Michelle Schupe, an actress from Chicago who finally brought Gordon’s dream of a stripped down performance to fruition during “Shakespeare for My Father”—a one-woman play originally performed by Lynn Redgrave about a child's longing for the love of her father who was a Shakespearean actor. 

“The performance was dynamite. People loved it,” said Gordon. “Considering it was the end of January, and the weather was not great, the events were very well attended. The panel discussion was booked out. People were like, ‘This is so great!’”

With the hopeful return of Weekend with Will in 2026 and, as of 2023, an MA in Theater and Performance Studies, the sky is the limit for where Gordon will take Shakespeare next. 

“The Applied Shakespeare program gave me possibility. For me, possibility is one of the central themes of life. If you have a sense of possibility, then you're excited to get up in the morning,”  said Gordon. ”Doing the capstone and developing my class opened up everything for me. I can do anything now.”