“It causes this tension because all the guys end up falling in love with the girls,” King said, describing the play as a romantic comedy. “They all fall in love and the guys try to woo the girls, but the girls don’t want to have anything to do with it. So the play is about the guys trying to find some way to be with these women, but also fighting the fact that they’ve sworn an oath.”

“Love’s Labour’s Lost” is making history at MSU on multiple fronts. In 100 years of theater performance at MSU, this work of Shakespeare has never been done. Also, it will be the first “green” show done on campus.

Director Christina Traister fell in love with the idea of an environmentally friendly performance, but making that happen has been more difficult than anyone expected.

“The challenge is how do you do a green show and still keep the production values so that it doesn’t look like it’s made out of milk jugs and hemp clothing,” Traister said.

“Hopefully the audience will not notice at all the green elements, so that the quality hasn’t gone down for stuff.”

This also is a memorable performance for King, as it is his thesis role — the role that wraps up his academic acting skills and is one of the final steps in achieving his master’s degree in fine arts.

“I’ve been kind of blessed because this character, he’s really an in-depth, rounded character who basically sets everything up,” King said. “Everything goes through him, all of the other characters’ opinions basically go through him, so it’s been an exciting task.”

Prepping for the wrap-up

Becoming Berowne has been a culmination of King’s entire academic acting career, but even more than that, about six months of intense research and work.

“A thesis role is pretty much a culmination of all your training up to date, and you’re embodying all of that training into one piece of performance,” said Traister, an assistant voice and acting professor. “All of the research elements that go into it, and the fact that it’s Shakespeare — it’s one step vernacularly removed from us so that’s kind of a challenge of it and getting your ear tuned in and jumping in that way.”

But to earn his master’s degree, King has to do more than just play Berowne on stage. He must write an in-depth character analysis, create a character biography and background, score the script (marking changes in character and changes in actions — a “map of the play for your character”) and scan the language of the script, marking the iambic pentameter throughout the play. He also created a glossary of the words in the play to ensure complete understanding of one of Shakespeare’s most difficult scripts.

To prepare for this role, King went beyond reading and studying the Shakespearean script — about 4,000 miles beyond. He was awarded a $4,000 grant to travel to London to study Shakespearean acting for 10 days.

“As an actor, you always want to do research and find your history about the play and about your character and about things like that,” he said. “But with a thesis role specifically, since it’s such a big project, all that has to be magnified and you have to focus on something — something specific. So I chose to focus on the world of the play and creating a character that’s in the tradition of how English actors and how Shakespearean actors have done in the past, focusing on the elements.”

While in London, King noticed the English actors took a different approach to Shakespeare, putting their minds, hearts and bodies into the words of the play.

“The words create everything,” he said. “The words create the relationship, the words create the environment, the words create the conflict and they never forget the audience, either.”

It’s that technique and element that King is focusing on while playing the part of Berowne.

“What I’m trying to do with that is find that way to bring the energy to the words and the focus on the words and let that create the character or reveal the character,” he said.

A thesis role is not meant to be a role you are used to, or a character you are typically cast as. It’s meant to be a challenge — to stretch a student’s limits as an actor.

“I kept telling them I want a challenge. I want a challenge. I want this to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “And it is. But it’s also been the most rewarding role I’ve ever done.”

The cast life

King describes the cast of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” as one of the strongest he’s ever been a part of — and it’s hard to disagree with that.

As cast members entered room 12 in the Auditorium before another evening rehearsal one recent Thursday, laughter and the chatter of friends — not just co-workers — was heard. Cast lists for next semester had been posted, and it was all anyone could talk about.

Supportive of each other and quietly watching and learning from each scene rehearsed, it was evident each cast member understood what it took to not just perform in “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” but to internalize it and make it relevant.

Each set of lines is another learning experience as Traister stopped the actors to explain the real-world applications of the antiquated Shakespearean text. By helping the actors understand the text better, she helps the audience understand the show more fully.

“I cast this back in April when I was seven-and-a-half-months pregnant, and it was the end of the semester, and I got all of my first choices, which I was really happy about,” Traister said. “But I was really pretty nervous because from the time we auditioned to the time that I had them in the first day of rehearsal, five and a half months had gone by.

“You just hope that what you had seen back then meshes, but I’m very happy. The cast is working so hard.”

Stephanie Koenig, a theater senior, plays Berowne’s love interest, Rosaline. Her role has been a challenge for her, because this is her first time doing a Shakespeare play.

“Kind of playing with the text in itself is challenging for her because she’s supposed to be one of the smartest characters in the show,” Koenig said. “It was hard for me, I had to really look into what she was saying and what metaphors she was using, so it’s fun to finally know what she’s saying.”

Some of her favorite cast memories go back to when rehearsals began about five weeks ago. They started out with table work — exploring and understanding the lines of the play.

“We were actually understanding the jokes and actually hearing Shakespeare for the first time,” she said. “Table work was great and we got to know each other. Doing runs has been fun because you get to play within the atmosphere of the show and sometimes you just want to laugh on stage because people are being really funny.”

Alex West, an English and theater junior who is playing the King of Navarre, said one of the best parts about the cast is that everybody gets along.

“It’s a good cast. We all have worked with each other or we know each other from class and it’s been a good atmosphere,” West said. “No one’s judging anyone else because we all are friends.”

At the end of the day, it all comes down to everyone working together and doing their best.

For King, that means focusing on acting — something both physical and vulnerable for him.

“The openness, the excitement, the energy of performing in front of a live crowd gives you something to feed off of,” he said.

“A lot of people in my life, when we talk about theater and why I do theater, a lot of people that I know use what I think is a cliché of, ‘I act to escape my real life.’ But I don’t think that’s what theater is. I think that acting is a throughway or a facet to express yourself — not to hide yourself or to escape yourself or to escape your life.”