Cherie Rowe, a teaching assistant in the English department at the University of Rhode Island, finds a mirror and comfort in her grief through Shakespeare.
This spring, Rowe is participating in a production of “Hamlet” at the Gamm Theatre where she plays Player Queen.
“I think my teaching informs my acting in that I always present, I’ve always known that for my students to get an appreciation or an understanding of texts, they have to make it their own,” Rowe said. “I can’t stand in the way, I am merely a facilitator clearing the way for them to get to the text and to find what is meaningful for them in their text.”
In her 30 years of teaching Shakespeare, she has always taught it with the perspective that Shakespeare is meant to be experienced.
Rowe has never taught “Hamlet” to her students, except for when she covered for another professor for a few days.
She found it incredibly valuable when the production spent a week going through the script line-by-line to ensure that the text was understood and at the heart of the production.
“Our job is to clear the way for the audience, to get out of the way, so that they can experience the text and the beautiful language Shakespeare offers,” Rowe was told by the production’s director, Tony Estrella.
Acting and being on stage gives her the ability to be focused on what is being said in the text and gives one incredible focus and concentration, according to Rowe.
“I was struck that this play was about grief,” Rowe said.
Rowe’s mother, who supported her pursuit of acting endeavors from a young age, passed away this August – days after Rowe received the news she would be in “Hamlet.”
Rowe has found herself to be especially moved by Jeffrey Church’s monologues, who plays Hamlet. He talks about his grieving process after losing his father during the play but only to the audience.
“That touches me every day, every time I hear that, those speeches,” Rowe said. “And it’s very comforting because they’re expressing things that not only have I experienced, but have known, you know, language, literature, words are my thing, I hadn’t words to explain what’s going on.”
At the age of seven, Rowe’s mother enrolled her in a stage school, beginning her lifelong involvement in theater.
“We were a single-parent family, very difficult circumstances, but she took the time and effort to take me to a stage school in England,” Rowe said. “She must really have been the only woman of color sitting there at this very posh stage school, which I’m sure we couldn’t really afford.”
Despite having taken many different classes, including multiple forms of dance, drama is what stuck with Rowe and she has loved acting ever since. Since coming to the United States in 2015, Rowe has missed the involvement she had with theater while living in England.
“I was at the Crescent Theatre Company in Birmingham for many, many, many years, over a decade, and missed the community and the wonder and joy of being involved,” Rowe said.
Rowe found the Hamlet role while she was looking into volunteer ushering at the Gamm Theatre in Warwick to get back into the theater community. Despite it being a professional play, Rowe took the chance to ask herself what she had to lose.
Being open to taking the risk and seeing it work out so well, as well as the relationships she has formed with the cast and crew of “Hamlet,” made Rowe’s experience amazing.
Rowe also finds this experience to be rewarding because of the effect it has had on the audiences who have come to see the show.
“To know that I’ve contributed to an experience with somebody that they understood everything and they loved it, to see the audience at the very end and they’re so moved and raptured, engaged, to be a part of giving some, you know, folk that is incredibly powerful and really, really rewarding,” Rowe said.
For those interested in seeing Rowe’s performance, “Hamlet” will be running at the Gamm Theatre through May 4.
