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July 15, 2023
July 22 – August 27, 2023
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Fall Festival of Shakespeare
Program Dates
January 3 to 29, 2023
Arrival: Monday, January 2 Departure: Monday, January 30
Tuition Fees
$4,875 USD
Early payment discount: Pay the full tuition by October 15 and save $600.
Nationally replicated and locally treasured, the annual Fall Festival of Shakespeare brings more than 500 high school students together each year for a nine-week, collaborative, non-competitive, celebratory exploration and production of multiple Shakespeare plays.
The flagship of our Education Program, the annual Fall Festival of Shakespeare is a residency program at 10 high schools in Massachusetts and neighboring New York. Shakespeare & Company directing teams lead students at each school through a language-based exploration of different Shakespeare plays, culminating in full-scale productions at their own schools and then on the main stage at our own Tina Packer Playhouse. When high-energy teenagers are turned loose – through the power of Shakespeare’s language – the thrill is contagious. And the houses are packed.
“This is a rock concert of Shakespeare! Show after show after show the theater is jammed with kids and adults cheering for the performers and the productions.” –WBUR Radio, Boston
The Fall Festival deeply engages students through personally meaningful, educationally rigorous and dramatically compelling experiences of Shakespeare’s classical dramas. The Festival is truly a celebration, never a competition. Students from multiple schools work collaboratively, exploring Shakespeare’s words, unpacking the humor and the heartbreak, the intensity and humanity of these unparalleled plays.
The 34th Annual Fall Festival of Shakespeare
November 17 - 20 at the Tina Packer Playhouse
SCHEDULE OF PERFORMANCES
Thursday, November 17
- 6:15 pm – Lee Middle & High School’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
BUY TICKETS - 8:30 pm – Berkshire Waldorf High School’s Much Ado About Nothing
BUY TICKETS
Friday, November 18
- 6:15 pm – Mount Greylock Regional School’s As You Like It
BUY TICKETS - 8:30 pm – Taconic High School’s Julius Caesar
BUY TICKETS
Saturday, November 19
- 1:15 pm – Monument Mountain Regional High School’s Henry V
BUY TICKETS - 3:30 pm – Springfield Central High School’s Love’s Labor’s Lost
BUY TICKETS - 6:15 pm – Pittsfield High School’s Twelfth Night
BUY TICKETS - 8:30 pm – Mount Everett Regional School’s Macbeth
BUY TICKETS
Saturday, November 19
- 12:00 pm – Lenox Memorial Middle & High School’s Hamlet
BUY TICKETS - 2:15 pm – Taconic Hills Jr/Sr High School’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
BUY TICKETS - 4:30 pm – Chatham High School’s Macbeth
BUY TICKETS - 6:15 pm – The Closing Reverence
Course Gallery
About the Tour
.01 Linklater Voice
The full progression of Kristin Linklater’s approach to voice training for actors is taught during the four weeks by Designated Linklater voice teachers. In addition to daily classes in Linklater, voice teachers regularly join in text classes and offer specialized classes to help participants integrate the voice work into their scenes.
.02 Movement
The movement progression includes Pure Movement (Swings), Alexander Technique, physical expressivity, and dance. Participants will be guided through exercises to promote awareness of (and release from) habitual body tension, sensitivity to impulse, dynamic physical presence and stamina, delight in moving with passion and precision, and ensemble.
.03 Text Work
Basics introduces the actor to a text approach which demands an open and personal commitment to thought, word, and gesture. Basics evolves into scene work, first through Dropping In (an approach to experiencing the text on a word-by-word basis) and into text analysis and detailed scene work. Classes in Sonnet and Structure of the Verse round out the text progression, allowing actors to merge their personal connection with the form of Shakespeare’s language.
.04 Actor/Audience Relationship
The participant is invited to explore the Elizabethan world of Actor/Audience Relationship—a theatrical reality without a fourth wall, in which the immediate energy of the audience fuels the actor to reveal a deeper level of truth and experience, which in turns enkindles the audience’s ability to receive Shakespeare’s language.
.05 Clown & Stage Fight
The participant is invited to explore the Elizabethan world of Actor/Audience Relationship—a theatrical reality without a fourth wall, in which the immediate energy of the audience fuels the actor to reveal a deeper level of truth and experience, which in turns enkindles the audience’s ability to receive Shakespeare’s language.
Tuition
Full course tuition is
$4,875 USD
- Early payment discount: Pay the full tuition by October 15 and save $600.
A limited number of scholarships are available for People of the Global Majority/BIPOC artists from the Dennis Krausnick Fellowship Fund. Application and audition video due by October 15. Contact us for more information.
You will learn:
- A deeper connection of the body and voice when acting on stage
- Confidence to be fully present on stage when speaking Shakespeare's language
- An understanding of the forms and structures that support the actor’s emotional, visceral and cognitive imagination
- The skills necessary to authentically deliver Shakespeare’s language with accuracy, specificity, and clarity of thought
- A renewed trust in yourself as a theatre artist
