The Norwich Free Academy students rehearsing onstage in Slater Auditorium on a recent afternoon were speaking in Shakespearean verse, fluidly delivering the text of “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Their performances, though, had a distinct teen vibe — relaxed and playful.

And wait, what was this? Music arose. Percolating at various times during the rehearsal were pop tunes from the 1980s, first “Walking on Sunshine” and later “Take On Me.”

When the show opens Friday at NFA, the students will be dressed in 1980s garb, too. It’s all part of a reimagining of the comedy “Much Ado About Nothing” that brings it into the ’80s and sets its among teenagers.

This production — the drama club NFA Playshop’s first Shakespeare show since 2019’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” — got its 1980s spin after a suggestion from Sarah Noiseux, who is assistant to director Phil Trostler for this production and who pictured the 1980s take from a costume/design perspective.

Trostler, who is director of NFA Playshop and is also the NFA drama teacher, said his first reaction to the 1980s concept was “no,” but then he thought about it more. He went through the text of “Much Ado,” and he recalled, “It made it much more exciting for me. You realize, oh, you could use this song here, you could use this Rubik’s Cube prop here.”

The NFA actors actually watched some pop cultural touchstones of the era like John Hughes movies and “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Saved by the Bell” TV shows so they could better understand the time frame.

Many of the characters fit rather smoothly into appropriate 1980s archetypes. The outsider in “Much Ado,” for instance, becomes a Goth in this version. The messenger is now a hall monitor in “Revenge of the Nerds” mode. Victorious soldiers returning from the battlefield have morphed into tennis players back from winning on the court.

For a masquerade ball scene in “Much Ado,” the NFA team is staging it more like a homecoming dance. The students don’t sing; the real songs are played as a sort of soundtrack. The teens came up with some of the song choices.

For a moment when there is supposed to be a dance break, Trostler decided to use Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine’s “Conga,” so the show now features a conga and limbo. “Shakespeare never heard of that, but it works. I don’t have to add anything different. We didn’t have to change any words,” Trostler said.

Noiseux is in charge of the 1980s-inspired costumes, creating some from scratch and ordering others. (She is the parent of two since-graduated NFA Playshop students and still works with the group.)

Universal themes

Trostler said he’s at a point where he would be happy directing just Shakespeare plays the rest of his life.

“You can do so much with it, and the themes are universal. If you approach it in a way where you grab the students’ attention and you ignore the fact that, ‘Hey, you are going to decipher some things later on’” in the text, it’s absolutely achievable, Trostler said. “‘Hamlet’ is about a guy whose father passes away, and his mom remarries quickly; people can relate to that.”

And a lot of what’s featured in “Much Ado” will resonate with high schoolers. It is, after all, about “gossip and rumors and what you say behind people’s back and how that affects you and your reputation,” Trostler said.

Learning from the best

Trostler, coincidentally, had just been part of a workshop with the Royal Shakespeare Company last year in England, where part of the focus was on “Much Ado.”

Trostler had heard about the workshop during a professional development program last year at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey and applied to be part of it.

The three-day England session was held at Wroxton College, and it attracted high school and middle school teachers as well as folks from other professions, including a lawyer who works with fellow attorneys on how they can use theatrical training as they present themselves to judges.

One of the things that Trostler brought from the Royal Shakespeare Company workshop to the NFA production involves not letting the text be a barrier to engagement. He said that approaching the plays as a collection of ideas, plots, characters and emotions rather than poring over each individual line actually speeds up understanding and helps students to connect to their roles and to one another.

“Shakespeare’s reputation can make it difficult to stay present and engaged in the moment for many actors. The RSC does a great job of removing the aura of Shakespeare as some sort of ‘holy’ text and putting the focus on building an onstage community and playing with the words/situations,” he said.

In rehearsals, the NFA folks run a scene a few times in the students’ own words to prevent overthinking. When they switch back to the memorized dialogue, Trostler said, the emotion and energy remain.

“Sometimes the cast gets too in their own heads about the more archaic lines, so moments like these remind them they are more prepared and knowledgeable than they believe,” he said.

Like Netflix

Some people are naturally intimidated by the prospect of a Shakespeare play, but Trostler said they shouldn’t be. When Shakespeare wrote these, they were “the common person’s entertainment,” Trostler said, comparing them to, say, Netflix today. Shakespeare’s work “wasn’t supposed to be royal and it wasn’t supposed to be lordly or intimidating in any way,” he said.

Trostler discussed why Shakespeare’s plays have continued to have an impact so long after they were written.

“I think it’s pretty much accepted that there’s Shakespeare and then there are others — Shakespeare and Neil Simon and whoever. It’s because, even in our private moments, we all have that ecstasy, we all have that despair, we all have that fury, and we get to see other people (in the plays) experience it. We hope that we don’t go through the same things they’re going through, but we do,” said Trostler, who also teaches NFA’s popular Shakespeare in Modern Drama class with veteran English teacher Pat Kirker.

What students think

The students acting in “Much Ado” are thoroughly enjoying the experience.

Harold Trafford, the 12th grader who plays Don Pedro, said that he wasn’t a fan of the 1980s setting change at first, but then he came around. The shift in eras works in part because Shakespeare is so universal.

“People think with Shakespeare comes a certain pomp and tradition and this uptight-edness, but Shakespeare is so informal, especially in his comedies. ... There are a lot of vulgar jokes. It’s very, very human,” Trafford said. “It’s a good reminder that a lot of the media really hasn’t changed in the past few centuries, and I think that Shakespeare can be applicable in any setting. We could have set this in the Cold War, or we could have set this in ancient Rome, and it still would have fit. I’m really excited to take this different perspective on it, and I think people will enjoy it more because the ’80s lends itself to a certain whimsicality.”

Grace Benton, a 12th grader who portrays Beatrice, has similar sentiments about the 1980s setting.

“I think it creates a unique spin on the characters and makes it easier for the audience to see how relatable and universal Shakespeare is, which is what Trostler has been preaching to us since we started,” she said.

In fact, Benton admitted that although she had read Shakespeare before, she hadn’t really liked it at first.

“With the way that we’re performing it, I hope that people can understand it and grow to love it as much as I have,” Benton said.

If you go

What: “Much Ado About Nothing”

Who: NFA Playshop

When: 7 p.m. Fri. and Sat.

Where: Slater Auditorium, Norwich Free Academy, Norwich

Tickets: $5 for students, children and senior citizens; $10 for everyone else

Visit: nfaschool.org/playshop