For somebody who once shied away from playing any of William Shakespeare’s characters, Valerie Clayman Pye has come a long way. Clayman Pye, an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College since 2004, has now decided to stage what is historically considered as the Bard’s earliest work,The Two Gentlemen of Verona as the Department of Theater’s last production of this semester.
    “This is where Shakespeare seems to have laid the foundation for his future plays,” she says, explaining why she chose this play. “In it you find phrases, verses, words, characters that will show up again in his masterpieces.”
    Professor Clayman graduated with a MFA from Brooklyn College in 2003 and headed immediately to the University of Exeter, England, spending a year to specialize in—what else?—staging Shakespeare.
     “It helped me overcome my fear as an actor—something a lot of actors can relate to, believe me,” she says.
    Currently working on her dissertation to obtain a PhD on performance, she has successfully created an actor training methodology.