Shakespeare at Winedale
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When University of Texas professor James B. Ayres founded the Shakespeare at Winedale program in 1970, he had one goal in mind: to teach Shakespeare's plays in their appropriate context, the theatre. "These plays are scripts written to be performed on a specific stage -- the Globe -- for a specific company of actors." The first summer class enrolled only 11 students. Thirty years later, Shakespeare at Winedale is a beloved international institution, a total-immersion program for the study of Shakespeare that brings unique performances to a renovated barn in Winedale, Texas, 70 miles east of Austin. Though he is known as the man who put The University of Texas at Austin on the map for Shakespeare studies, James Ayres, or "Doc" as he is known to his friends and colleagues, was not always so interested in The Bard. He was born and reared in San Antonio, the grandson and nephew of prominent Texas architects Atlee B. and Robert M. Ayres. As a youngster, Ayres turned his attention to football, baseball, and track, and he worked at a Handy Andy grocery store after school to help out the family. The first Shakespeare play he ever read was Twelfth Night, "because my mother had it at home." James Ayres aspired to play professional baseball, and he hit eight home runs before he ever hit a single in the semi-pro Bluebonnet League. Today, he gets a twinkle in his eye recalling this statistic. He gave up serious baseball ambitions when he became more interested in his education. He enrolled in Texas Lutheran College (Seguin, Texas) for one semester in 1952. "I didn't do well," he says, "but I was a good athlete. Then I got drafted." So his education was put on hold. Ayres served in the Anti-Aircraft Division of the U.S. Army. While stationed in Alaska, he first developed his interest in performance. He was a member of the chapel choir, and they formed a comedy and musical group. "The Colonel flew us around to perform for the troops," Ayres recalls, "back when Alaska was just a territory." After his discharge from the army, he enrolled at Baylor University, choosing to study the liberal arts over the family trade of architecture. "My grandfather would have paid for my education," he says, "if I had followed in his footsteps and studied architecture. But I didn't want to do that. I didn't take his money. He was furious when I went to Baylor." In only three years he earned a triple degree in history, Spanish, and English ('58) and then went on to earn a master's degree in American Literature (Florida State University, '60), as well as a PhD in English (Ohio State University, '64). He credits his interest in Shakespeare to his professors at Ohio State, who helped him to explore different ways in which to study the works. Soon after receiving his doctorate, Ayres joined the faculty of The University of Texas at Austin as a professor of English, showing great expertise in the field of Renaissance literature. After six years of teaching, he met philanthropist Ima Hogg at a dinner party in Winedale and she made her barn available for his use. He found himself in the right place at the right time to plant the seeds of what would become known as Shakespeare at Winedale. 
"Ima Hogg wanted to see property used," Ayres explains, "not just existing as a museum." So he transformed the barn into a versatile performance space. In the classroom at Winedale, the study has always been artistic and creative, and inspired by new ideas. Ayres has become intrigued with how succeeding generations perceive Shakespeare. "The students are always reading anew," he says. "I can only teach them so much and then they take it the rest of the way." Until Shakespeare at Winedale, Ayres had often experienced a gap between the academic understanding of Shakespeare and the theatre-producer's understanding. Now these two groups were coming together. In the early years, the students of Shakespeare at Winedale would sacrifice themselves to the rigorous study of Shakespeare just to put on one performance. But for Ayres and the students it was the process of getting to that performance that made it all worthwhile. It was about playing with the work. "We always have to keep in mind," he says, "that these plays are written for the stage. They are scripts, not texts. We need to explore beyond and beneath, and the work will only be complete when it is performed. And that takes people." This approach to the production of Shakespeare's plays is what makes the Winedale performances accessible to various audiences, and this openness has made the program internationally famous. Today, Shakespeare at Winedale is an intense, all-immersing 17-week course that focuses on the process of putting the plays together. A group of performers is selected by interview, not audition, from a pool of applicants from all over the world. Surprisingly, very few people with theatrical backgrounds are chosen, because Ayres believes that understanding and performing Shakespeare are not the exclusive right of any single group. This is a program in which anyone--engineers, physics majors, lawyers, homemakers, surgeons, artists--can succeed. They all start on the same, blank page. "All true learning begins with ignorance," he says, as he makes actors out of non-actors and elicits stupendous performances out of non-performers. 
Each May, after eight weeks of distance study, these diverse 17 to 20 students converge on UT's Winedale Historical Center near Round Top, Texas, to begin the regimen of 18-hour days totally dedicated to The Bard. For nine weeks, they spend every waking moment in each other's company: learning roles, designing and sewing costumes, eating, relaxing, and playing together. By late July, the group has forged a collective bond powerful enough to carry through the summer's public performances, and often well beyond. They put on 24 performances of three plays, in repertory in residence at Winedale, and then take the play on the road, traveling to London and Stratford for an additional two weeks of performances. "When we first started going to London [in 1998]," says Ayres, "there were people saying, 'How did an English professor have a play that made it to the Globe?!'" Not everyone is as comfortable with the crossover of academy and performance. Ayres adds, "My colleagues would ask, 'How the hell did you do that?' like it was forbidden!" Now, each summer, the group brings all three plays to England. Each one is performed once--at the Globe, at the Swan (where the Royal Shakespeare Company resides), and in the round at the Orange Tree in Richmond. Ayres knows that traveling with the plays broadens the experience for the students because they have to "confront the advantages and disadvantages of the actual places where Shakespeare performed them." The students work quickly to adapt their well-rehearsed plays to the vastly different stages: Winedale's stage is an eighth of the size, but Shakespeare's stage has only two entrances compared to Winedale's nine. Such challenges are the final step in the ongoing, exploratory process of Ayres' program. The process of mounting a play is "continual, exploratory," he says, "it is a never-ending quest to understand, to seek--not unlike the Holy Grail--that which is never found. It is as Eliot says: 'We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.'" 
The loyalty of Ayres' students--to him, to the program, to Shakespeare, to each other--is extraordinary, and many continue to keep in touch. It is his unique "teaching" and direction of Shakespeare that thrills participants and patrons alike. James B. Ayres has directed 25 of The Bard's 37 works, and he has offered more than 20 courses at UT Austin, where he continues to teach his Shakespeare course. This extraordinary career has earned him many awards, including the Bromberg Award for Teaching Excellence (1967), the Harry Ransom Award for Teaching Excellence (1985), the Eyes of Texas Award (1986), the Ima Hogg Cultural Achievement Award (1990), and the Liberal Arts Council Award for Teaching (1991). In 2000, he handed over the directorial reins to James Loehlin (a Winedale alumnus of '83 and '84 and also on the UT faculty). Ayres remains as Founding Director and is very much involved in the program. "I still oversee a lot of it and assist in developing funding. I still teach the spring course at Winedale," he says enthusiastically. It's clear that Doc Ayres, who now lives only 15 miles away from his beloved barn, will remain immersed in the program he started 30 years ago. Margaret J. Barker (M.A. English '01)
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