Save Freewill: Jenn Galm's Story
- freewillshakespeare
- May 30
- 5 min read
It may seem a little egotistical to have the person who writes content for Freewill write about themselves, but I hope you pardon the intrusion and allow me to share some of my Freewill story (I promise to make up for it with childhood photos and goofy selfies).
For those who know me well, or even not so well, can tell how much of a Shakespeare nut I am, and I genuinely have Freewill to thank for it.
My journey with Freewill started in 2005, at the age of 7, during the production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. My family were a little worried about me being able to understand the plot of the show, but as Costard mistakenly delivered a letter to Rosaline that was actually meant for Jaquenetta, I apparently, quite loudly announced, “They got the wrong letter!”. From that moment on, my family were sure I’d be just fine.
And ever since, Freewill has become a mainstay of my summer.
Not long after seeing my first show at Freewill, I took part in Camp Shakespeare for four different years. Camp Shakespeare was an initiative started by Freewill to offer a week-long summer camp that included acting, stage combat, a backstage tour, and rehearsals leading to a condensed scene or production of the comedy happening that summer. After you performed (to adoring crowds of volunteers and parents) you stayed to watch the matinee of the show you just worked on. Camp Shakespeare was one of my first forays into theatre, and one of the reasons I still work in the arts and especially love work supporting youth. I remember my first year, borrowing my mom’s patchwork jean vest and offering a pair of rubber boots to another performer to complete her look, and there really is nothing quite like being able to perform on the Heritage Amphitheatre stage. Another year, I remember climbing the steps to be part of an ensemble of Fleance’s in a row, bemoaning our pet Crab’s (stuffed animals who we towed around on leashes). My final year, when I was older, I performed in a condensed production of Twelfth Night as Sebastian, my Viola counterpart and I wearing matching button-up shirts, page boy hats, and sharing a pair of leather gloves to represent that we were missing our other half. I was truly lucky to take part in the heyday of Camp Shakespeare.
While performing on stage for brief moments was fun, I was truly just as happy to be sitting in the audience. My family have been audience members since the mid-late 90s, often seeing each show several times in a run because we knew we’d catch something new and just loved to see how the show evolved over the four week run. Seeing a show that many times also afforded us the opportunity to remember lines and moments that are still jokes and quotes in our family.
Marianne Copperthorne’s Speed dismissively saying: “Whatever, Proteus. What. Ever”;
Referring to Ziploc bags as ‘hand bags’ because of Titus Andronicus (iykyk);
And some rather iconic song references like “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow Wow” in Taming of the Shrew or “Living in Illyria” (to the tune of “Back in the USSR”) in Twelfth Night, or the closing group number of Much Ado About Nothing.
Being an audience member who has grown up with the festival, I’ve also been afforded the absolute pleasure of growing and learning alongside the work. There is nothing like seeing performers who were quite young when they first worked with Freewill, now performing on professional stages across the country, and seeing more new faces join Freewill and sink their teeth into the Bard’s world and words. And seeing Shakespeare so young has helped me appreciate his work and language so much more than only reading it ever would have done.
If you ever get me on a rant about teaching Shakespeare in high school, I am one of the biggest proponents for seeing it first. Nothing helps those words jump off the page more than seeing it performed for you, allowing you to connect with characters by their looks and using context clues to help you understand complex language. Shakespeare is not easy to understand at first (and I can say that as someone who has been hearing that language for 20 years), and I hope more kids and young adults can come and see Freewill and these shows and experience Shakespeare come alive in new and fascinating ways.
From watching spectacular sunsets to shoo-ing squirrels out of the concession tent to watching the actors slowly walk up the hill to their next entrance, volunteering afforded me even more opportunities to fall in love with the Festival. Volunteering also meant you started to know shows a bit more than you planned, so you started hearing ad libs from actors, like the Captain in Twelfth Night, played by John Ullyatt, saying: “Not two hours travel from this…drippy spot” while a small hole in the tent caused a drip on stage or you see a show’s closing dance number to “September” by Earth, Wind, and Fire so many times that a group of volunteers and staff perform it at the top of the hill for the cast. There are so many special moments that make you feel a part of this unique and wonderful community.
My most recent journey with Freewill began in 2018, as I moved from volunteer to paid intern, and then later to contract staff. These moments gave me a greater appreciation for the small team that make this festival run. The time and energy they commit to this full-scale production and four-week long festival, is astounding. It also allowed me to create other cherished memories, like creating inventive tip jars based on the shows for that year, babysitting the ‘sheep’ in A Winter’s Tale, who had taken it upon themselves to really get into character before their entrances and started tryingto eat leaves off the trees, and taking a selfie with one of the other staff along with the Prime Minister Trudeau’s security detail while being absolutely soaked in the rain.
It often feels like the summer camp energy I experienced as a kid with Camp Shakespeare, still lives on in every bit of the Festival. Especially in the past few years, when so much of Freewill’s ‘regular plan’ was thrown out a window and subsequently exploded, it has meant so much more to me to find those lovely human connections and see that what made Freewill so magical for me as a child, is still embedded into the lifeblood of how this Festival continues. We are scrappy, often working with a much smaller budget than we’d like (but what arts company isn’t?), and the university student ‘just figure it out’ energy that built Freewill really does live on in the work we do.
There is something so truly enchanting about being outdoors, sitting on a chair or the grass, and hearing Shakespeare performed by a troupe who almost look like they are only here because some winds of fate brought them to you. They will only appear for a brief time in the midsummer, but when they’re here, the pieces fall into place and it’s like magic.
Over the years, I’ve been a part of Freewill in many capacities, and Freewill has been part of so many memories, like spending time with my family, friend reunions, wishing high school English teachers farewell, and introducing new folks to Shakespeare. Freewill has built this formative community of artists who inspired my love of the arts and of the Bard. Now 20 years later, I am proud to be a piece of that history, and hope that more kids and youth, like myself, can become inspired by it too.
Freewill truly has enriched my life and I hope, if you have the capacity to do so, you can help it continue to enrich the lives of generations to come.
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