Hamlet Act 4 Scene 6 Audio

[Maybell Hughs]

Alongside her main gig in public television, Pearce did freelance audio work, as well, which presented her with the opportunity to work with audio behind the scenes in sports broadcasting. In 34 years of freelance audio work, Pearce has worked everything from Duke and UNC basketball to Sunday Night Football and the Olympics on NBC.

During a sports broadcast, the sub-mixer works alongside the main audio mixer who sits at a console of roughly 100 channels of audio that are plugged into the sound board. The main audio mixer manages audio from things like play-by-play talent mics, replay sounds, tape machines and music.

Last year, the pandemic wiped out six months of work for Pearce since most sports were canceled throughout most of the spring and summer. Even now, she said she still has to kind of play things by ear because of the uncertainty that the pandemic brings for live sports.

Once home to the huckleberry-pickers and stone-cutters of the past century, the Trapps Mountain Hamlet housed as many as 40-50 families by the time of the Civil War. This vanished hamlet now consists of the restored Van Leuven Cabin; 60 cellar holes and foundations of dwellings, mills, barns, a school, a tavern, a chapel, and other structures; over 40 charcoal pits; and four family burying grounds. This historic district is a subsistence hamlet listed on both the New York State and National Register of Historic Places.

Special thanks to the many people, including former residents of the Trapps Mountain Hamlet and descendants of Trapps families, who contributed their knowledge of life in the hamlet and family materials for this project and also to Christopher Boulton for his assistance in developing the audio portion of this tour.

Even when cleared of trees, the relatively thin soil, with many rocks and boulders jutting up, provided only marginal pastureland able to support just a few farm animals. In order to maximize the amount of area for grass growth, most of the early farmers removed as many rocks as possible from the soil.

But where to put the rocks? Some were used to build the low stone boundary walls so characteristic of New York and New England. It was also common for farmers to simply collect any rocks that could be moved and pile them on top of an especially large (and immovable) boulder or a bedrock outcrop.

Here you will see a large, rounded piece of Shawangunk Conglomerate (sometimes called Shawangunk Grit) that a millstone cutter abandoned long ago. In some parts of the Shawangunks, ready access to more suitable exposures of the conglomerate bedrock made it possible to produce excellent, readily-saleable gristmill stones, an important source of income for Trapps families in the 19th century.

Here, the trail crosses a brook located at a point where a farm wagon road once crossed the stream. Its existence is indicated by a number of stones laid on top of one another on each side of the brook to form bridge abutments. The bridge would have allowed the passage of wagons carrying hay, firewood, or cut millstones

Here the trail crosses over an old stone fence, leaving one property and entering onto another. The lands ahead belonged to Ben Fowler who owned about 150 acres. The New York State Agricultural Census of 1865 recorded 29 acres in pasture, 38 acres in meadow for hay making, 2 acres in winter rye, 4 acres in oats, and 8 acres in buckwheat. The census also listed his livestock as consisting of three horses, four pigs, 24 sheep, and a flock of chickens. For the most part, the Trapps Hamlet economy was one of subsistence farming, with most residents owning a few horses, cows, pigs, and a flock of chickens.

Here is one of the several family burying grounds established by the people of the Trapps Mountain Hamlet as an alternative to public cemeteries. The oldest headstone to be recognized here dates from 1866. One of the old stones is that of Ben Fowler, landowner and the proprietor of the nearby lodging house and tavern. A number of the burials here were of the infant children of George and Rachel Coddington, another of the Trapps families. Rachel was a daughter of Ben Fowler.

Look up the Old Van Leuven Road, now cutting through dense forest, and try to imagine the scene a century ago when the area was open to the skies and the road was bordered by almost entirely cleared fields of crops and by pastures with grazing animals. Far ahead, the Eli Van Leuven home would have been visible, as well as various outbuildings.

What was family life in the Trapps like during the late 1800s? A typical family was large, with many children all living in a house as small as the one you see here. Trapps men worked at a variety of jobs, including stone-cutting, charcoal-burning, cutting cord wood, and shaping hoops for barrels; they worked, too, as day laborers for the Minnewaska and Mohonk Mountain Houses. Trapps women also worked at a variety of occupations, both at home and at the local mountain hotels. At home, they made butter and cheese, raised chickens, and cultivated kitchen gardens with the help of the children. Some women had hand looms on which they wove a variety of fabrics. Summertime blueberry- and huckleberry-picking was an activity for the entire family, with the sale of berries being another source of cash.

Like most Trapps houses, the Van Leuven Cabin lacked plumbing of any kind. There was no electricity, so candles and kerosene lamps were used when required. Electric and telephone lines did not reach parts of the Trapps Mountain Hamlet until the 1950s or later! In the photo, we can see how the Van Leuvens made use of the large boulder located next to their home. Using millstone-cutting methods, a large, crude shelf was fashioned, thereby producing a useful, outdoor, working surface for washing and cooking.

The family of Eli Van Leuven evidently never dug a well. Instead, they depended for their drinking water on a spring located down slope from their house adjacent to the Coxing Kill (into which the spring water flows). The path to this water source descends sharply downhill and requires a steep uphill return.

In 1874, George Coddington acquired land from a member of another old-time Trapps family, the Burgers, and built a house here. The depression in the ground is all that remains of the cellar of the house. As with most structures in the Trapps Mountain Hamlet, the upper, wooden portion of the house has long disappeared. Just beyond this house site lies U.S. Route 44/55, which was completed in 1930. Keep in mind that for most of the existence of the Trapps Mountain Hamlet, this highway was not here! The building of this road provided work for years for a number of Trapps men, but, ironically, its route destroyed many of the homesteads in the Trapps Mountain Hamlet.

WEATHER UPDATE: Click here to see current weather conditions from our NYS Mesonet station at Spring Farm.

ART EXHIBIT AND SALE: Walks in Beauty, a watercolor and acrylic painting exhibition by Mira Fink, will be on display at the Visitor Center Gallery for the month of July, with paintings available for purchase. Click here to learn more.

DUCK POND DAM UPDATE: Mohonk Preserve is working with engineers to develop a plan to address the failing dam. As always, please stay off the pond surface and be sure to keep all pets on leash.

To make the full-length and unaltered plays of Shakespeare and G.B. Shaw comprehensible and appealing to children of every age, YSP relies on original audio materials created by founder and director, Richard DiPrima.

For the 16 Shakespeare plays and for the Shakespeare workshops, these materials both explain every line of these challenging texts and also give some basic direction to the actors. This system gives equal access to readers and non-readers alike (and thereby also allows YSP to serve pre-readers and those with different learning styles in memorizing their lines).

Initially, commenting is modeled by the apprentice or intern directors who respond to a scene by letting the players know first what they did well and then what could be improved and how. Thereafter, all actors are welcome and encouraged to comment at the end of a scene.

Because actors have listened to their explanation audio materials, they already have an understanding of their characters; their comments to counterparts (actors with the same part in another cast) are usually focused and helpful. In addition, because the actors are dedicated to the cooperative task of telling this complex story, they want to help each other to do his or her best. This dedication and cooperation creates a supportive, non-competitive environment that fosters serious and respectful feedback regardless of age or experience.

Intern and apprentice directors help create the YSP productions.These young directors are always veterans of the YSP programs. They help lead every phase of the productions such as overseeing rehearsals, guiding actors through memorizing goals, scheduling and overseeing run-throughs and special rehearsals, assigning tech roles, and helping dress rehearsals and performances to run smoothly.

William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language. The poet, playwright and actor is the bestselling author of all time. Born in Stratford-upon-Avon around 1564, he was a successful playwright and actor in London by the end of the 16th century.

Also known as the Bard of Avon, Shakespeare wrote about the Kings and Queens of England. His 37 plays covered four main genres; comedy, tragedy, history and romance. Some famous comedies include The Merchant of Venice and Much Ado About Nothing. His historical plays dramatized past events, notably the War of the Roses in Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI. Later, he moved more towards tragedy, with Macbeth, King Lear, Othello and Hamlet.

A fanciful comedy that surrounds the events of the marriage of Thesues and Hippolyta. Nothing is what it seems with Athenian lovers and actors who are controlled by fairies that live in the forest. Some great characters appear in this play, notably Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius. A magical read that is often compared with the magic flute.

c80f0f1006