Shakespeare, Set to Music

Shakespeare, Set to Music

LAGRANDE, Ore. – When Hannah Brown steps onto the stage in Loso Hall this March, she won’t just be performing Shakespeare. She’ll be singing it.

“It’s very different,” said Brown, a senior at Eastern Oregon University. “Nick took all of those Shakespeare words and put them into songs. The words are Shakespeare, but the music is all originally Nick.”

The music belongs to Nicholas Vece, ’24, who returned to campus to premiere Thou Hast Thy Will, a 14-piece song cycle built from Shakespeare’s sonnets and monologues. The Winter 2026 production runs March 12–14 at 7 p.m., with a 2 p.m. matinee on March 15 in the Schwarz Theatre.

For Vece, the idea began during rehearsal several years ago when he was still a student.

“I was working on a monologue, and the director stopped me and said, ‘Shakespeare’s just music. It has rhythm. It has flow,’” Vece said. “That stuck with me. If it’s already music, then it could be music if I wrote it that way.”

Over the next two years, including his final year at EOU and after graduation, Vece began composing. The result blends jazz, folk and musical theater styles, all grounded in Shakespeare’s original language.

The production is intentionally lean. It requires no elaborate set and no costly performance rights. It features four student vocalists, a piano, percussion and bass. For a rural university where creativity often meets practicality, it is high-impact art built with intention.

Junior Jakob Graffunder said the concept drew him in immediately.

“Taking the sonnets and putting them into music, it’s such a unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Graffunder said. “I knew I wanted to be part of it.”

Brown said rehearsals have pushed the cast.

“Oh yes, lots of Shakespeare to memorize,” she said, laughing. “But we’ve had so much fun performing it.”

For Vece, returning to campus as a director feels different than being a student.

“When you’re at a place like EOU, you don’t just stay in one lane,” he said. “I worked in the costume shop. I was a teaching assistant for acting and stage combat. I studied jazz theory and music production. You learn how everything fits together.”

That hands-on experience shaped the way he built this production. He writes the music, directs the cast and collaborates closely with student performers. A fellow alum, Hannah Johnson, ’24, serves as music director, and an alum bassist will return to perform with the ensemble, creating a production that bridges graduating classes.

“These are students who remind me of myself a few years ago,” Vece said. “If I can create a space for them to perform something original, that matters to me.”

After graduating in 2024, Vece remained in La Grande. He now works in pediatric behavioral health, running an integrated primary care program that teaches adolescents skills to manage anxiety and depression. He is awaiting word on admission to a Ph.D. program, with the goal of becoming a university psychology professor.

Even as he looks toward five more years of study, he says theater will remain part of his life.

“I never wanted to make it a job,” he said. “I wanted to keep that fire alive.”With Thou Hast Thy Will, that fire returns to the Schwarz Theatre stage, carried by student voices and shaped by an alum who once stood where they stand now. For Eastern Oregon audiences, it is both a new production and a reminder of what can grow when graduates come back to build something.