Shaking up Shakespeare

It was the quietest shipwreck in maritime history. Bodies heaved and rocked against the crashing tides, but when the maelstrom cleared, there was no wreckage to be found —only a group of actors rehearsing at the Asolo Repertory Theatre.

This scene from the opening moments of William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” is being played out in silence as part of a rehearsal exercise devised by director Jen Wineman.

After directing her young cast of M.F.A. students to map out the play’s 200 actions, Wineman instructed them to act each one out, sans dialog, to internalize the Bard’s complex words and phrases.

From Sept. 29 to Nov. 24, they’ll perform the classic comedy in 45 minutes in front of high school audiences. But instead of period garb, the actors will be dressed in summer-camp uniforms.

As a part of the Asolo Repertory Theatre’s annual education initiative, called the New Stages Tour, the Shakespearean adaptation takes place in a modern-day summer camp. The initiative, which is entering its sixth year, places the theater’s third-year M.F.A. acting students in a William Shakespeare production that’s been adapted into a condensed version and filled with modern cultural allusions to help introduce Sarasota and Manatee county students to live theater.

“Once you crack Shakespeare’s code, it opens up your brain,” says Wineman. “It makes you better at learning languages, better at learning in other areas of school, and it makes you more confident in tackling other books and writers. That’s why I think Shakespeare is still important.”

Wineman, who directed last year’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (which was presented as a modern-day high school drama), has nicknamed this year’s adaptation “Wet Hot American Twelfth Night,” a nod to her partial inspiration from the film and TV series, “Wet Hot American Summer.”

Characters, traditionally of royal stock, are now cast as camp counselors, complete with official uniforms. Likewise, “Twelfth Night’s” commoners are now campers, decked out in 1970s ringer T-shirts and shorts.

To adapt the play, Wineman condensed a lot of the original material. But she says squeezing paragraphs of energy, emotion and comedy into a new script, complete with pop-culture allusions, was a challenge worth tackling.

“Our goal is to bring something to the schools that will make the students feel like they can see themselves in it,” she says. “This text is alive. It’s funny, sexy and adventurous.”

To help appeal to a younger crowd, the production will feature a cast rendition of Top-20 pop songs, including numbers by Taylor Swift, Charlie Puth, Omi and Bonnie Tyler. But for Wisemen, the best tools to reach today’s classrooms are still Shakespeare’s words and characters and the power of live performance.

“The best feedback we got last year was from this boy who told me, ‘I walked in here thinking it was going to be something boring that I wouldn’t understand, but I loved it,’” she says.