Brian Fox was named the best insulter Wednesday morning.

The 12-year-old won the event in the Elizabethan Olympiad with “tottering, plume-plucked codpiece” at the Montana Shakespeare Company’s Bard Days, held this week at Performance Square on the Walking Mall.

Fox, who will be a seventh-grader at C.R. Anderson, is spending the week with 29 other young people exploring the Shakespearean world. While he enjoys learning about William Shakespeare, his plays and acting, Fox has enjoyed the stage combat the most.

That comes as no surprise to Martha Sprague, managing director and co-founder of the company. She said many boys participate every year in the camp, now in its seventh year, because of the stage combat.

“It’s challenging because they are using two swords,” she said.

Fox said Shakespearean acting is unlike other types such as Broadway or Hollywood.

“It’s never in modern time — it’s in the past and can be really sad, really funny, but always historical,” he said.

Sprague said the Montana Shakespeare Company is made up primarily of adults but because the work is so rich and has such beautiful language it connects all humans.

“That includes young people as well,” she said.

The hope, Sprague said, is that Bard Days takes some of the mystery out of Shakespeare, giving students an opportunity to grasp the concepts in the work.

“We want to bring it to a new generation of actors,” she said.

This is the third year Lauren Driscoll, 14, attended the camp. She enjoys working closely with the professional actors.

“The adults have fancy degrees and you get to work closely with them,” said Driscoll, who will be a freshman at Helena High next month.

Shakespeare talks in circles, she said, and at the camp they dissect it and learn about tone and affliction and how it affects the words.

“A lot of kids, when you say Shakespeare, they think of one classic play and sometimes one balcony scene,” she said.

The camp changes that, Driscoll added.

The loose format works for young people, Sprague said, because they see that while the adults involved take their work seriously, they take themselves lightly.

“Kids are like sponges and we want them to see the job because it’s worth passing on,” she said.

Reporter Alana Listoe: 447-4081 or alana.listoe@helenair.com