ABSTRACT
The first of three chapters detailing Shakespeare & Company’s Education programs, Shakespeare-in-the-Schools lays out the Northeast Regional Tours of Shakespeare, SLAW: Shakespeare and the Language that Shaped a World (an interactive performance event) and the Schools Residencies (tailor-made workshops for elementary, middle and high schools). The chapter then turns to the Fall Festival of Shakespeare (lauded in Harvard University’s Project Zero and increasingly emulated across the USA and internationally). This ‘rock concert’ of a Shakespeare fest brings together ten high schools, each preparing its unique interpretation of a 90-minute, edited Shakespeare play. The pedagogy of auditions, directors’ preparation, ‘common classes’ and student experience, as honed over the years by Kevin G. Coleman, is explored. The chapter concludes with the professional development workshops for teachers, aimed to embolden schoolteachers to take Shakespeare out of the classroom and into the students’ bodies. There are also findings from the Company’s 2002 ‘Rose Playhouse Institute’ bringing together education artists, teachers, university professors and archeological specialists to understand how the Elizabethan playhouses activated the actor/audience relationship and how that may impact the contemporary teacher-actor/student-audience possibilities.
