"It was Romeo and Juliet, and I was blown away by it," he said. So blown away that he signed up for an acting class and began performing with a Shakespeare in the Park company. That was the start of his career as a professional stage actor and drama teacher. Today, as director of UC Santa Cruz's Shakespeare to Go program, he helps thousands of school children experience that same feeling he had the first time he heard the great playwright's words projected across a stage.
"They're going through all the stuff Shakespeare is about," said Ryan of his young audiences. "Conflicts with family, love, what it's like to be a man. The topics are so real to them."
Funded through a National Endowment for the Arts initiative called Shakespeare for a New Generation, the university's Shakespeare to Go program performs abridged versions of plays in local middle and high schools. Each year Ryan adapts a 50-minute version of a play selected from the upcoming summer season of Shakespeare Santa Cruz, the acclaimed professional repertory company housed at the university. Ryan is both a lecturer in the university's theater department and an equity actor with Shakespeare Santa Cruz.
Students in his winter quarter acting class work on the production, and in the spring they load their sets and costumes into a van and take the show on the road, performing three to six times a week.
The aim is to introduce kids to Shakespeare and to provide teachers with classroom materials, guest lectures and opportunities to bolster their English lessons with live theater.
Last spring, the student troupe performed The Tempest at 30 schools and five community events for more than 6,000 audience members. For many of the school children, it was the first time they'd ever seen live theater.
"They really respond to the play," Ryan said. "Sometimes they want to talk back to the actors. They don't have any preconceived notions about what live theater is."
Ryna Currier, a seventh-grade English teacher at Rolling Hills Middle School in Los Gatos, brings Shakespeare To Go to her school in conjunction with its annual Renaissance Faire. The plays have become one of the most popular activities with her students.
"Kids can really appreciate Shakespeare at a very young age, if you teach them something about it," she said.
She prepares them with teaching materials the university program provides and makes sure they understand the plot. For students studying the fundamentals of writing and language skills, Currier said, live Shakespeare truly enhances their learning experience.