By: Adrian Peterson-Holt (Class of 25)

Fall Fest means the world to me. Fall Fest is a festival made up of 10 schools in the Berkshires to present each school's play that they worked on, with directors from Shakespeare & Company, over the course of 2 months. 

This year we celebrate the 35th Annual Fall Festival, and the play chosen for PHS this year was AS YOU LIKE IT. We had a few students from Taconic High School join us. 

I got to play the male lead, Orlando, and to this day I still feel like the luckiest man to be chosen to play him. Orlando was such a fun character. Getting to go on stage and yell out about how much I love someone is a great experience. I could feel the emotion and the passion that I presented. I also got to interact with the audience, which is my favorite part about acting. 

Getting to work with so many new faces was another part of the experience I enjoyed most. 

I interviewed some of the cast and asked them;

 “What was your favorite part of being a part of Fall Fest?” 

Many of them said Everything. 

One student, Tyler Blake, who played the role of Silvius, mentioned our common classes at Shakespeare & Company. These classes were an opportunity to meet the students from the other 9 schools and welcome each other as one. This is a great experience for everyone, especially for our first years, because it helps people meet others who are just like them. It helps people realize that we are all in this together, over 100+ of us.

 Brooke Tripicco who played our female lead, Rosalind, said “Working with Shakespeare & Company has been an honor and a privilege because they are such a great community, they are supportive, they lift everyone up and make everyone feel included.”  

When you work with Shake & Co you don't just get to meet new people, you get to create a permanent family. These are people who will be there for each other through thick and thin, we will always have each other's backs. 

Being an actor is much harder than what we present on stage. While I went around and asked our cast questions I got the opportunity to ask the question; “What was the hardest part about being a part of the Fall Festival?” 

Isabella Brown, who played Jaques, said “Maintaining a good healthy schedule for myself.” 

Ironically, they said ”healthy” because Izzy was one of the few of our actors who unfortunately got too sick before the weekend of our shows, leading to their inability to perform. They are fortunately now back and better than ever. 

Typically Shake & CO nor Pittsfield High Schools Proteus do not do understudies with high school productions. 

Due to this fact, we had both students and our directors step foot into someone else's roles. This allowed us to value the ability of adaptation and flexibility that we have learned to build. We have gotten to see the true strength of the adaptability of all of our cast members when facing these challenges. We have overcome them stronger than before. This has taught us a lot about ourselves as actors and as people both onstage and off. 

I would love to shout out our understudies Dea Wood, who played understudy for Jaques, Sara Linares, one of the directors of As You Like It, who played the understudy of Duke Frederick, Caroline Calkins, the other director of As You Like It, understudied the role of William/Sir Oliver Martext and Luke Haskell, a director from Shakespeare & Company, who understudied Corin. 

We are forever grateful for these four and their talent and ability to take on such big circumstances of characters they have never touched before. 

My experience in this play has been the best and it only gets better from here because we are having our last show this Saturday, November 18th, 2023, at Shakespeare & Company. I highly recommend you come to see this show. It's a one-in-a-lifetime experience that you won't regret!

Tickets: https://ci.ovationtix.com/403/production/1182371?performanceId=11375556