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The Education Program at Shakespeare & Company
Heart-stirring, crowd-rousing, life-changing theatre-in-education programs are a bedrock tradition at Shakespeare & Company. Our Education Program brings the classical poetry and plays of Shakespeare into the lives of as many students and teachers as possible in ways that are personally meaningful, educationally inspiring, and theatrically compelling.
One of the most extensive arts-in-education programs in the northeast, Shakespeare & Company reaches more than 40,000 students and teachers each year with innovative, socially responsive, and educationally challenging performances, workshops and residencies. The Program has been nationally recognized as an innovative leader in the field of integrating theatre arts into education, and teaching Shakespeare. Since the program was founded in 1978, nearly one million elementary, middle, and high school students have taken part. Our program immerses students in the world of Shakespeare and classical theatre in the most active, engaging, and personally meaningful ways.
Donate To DKFF
The Dennis Krausnick Fellowship Fund (DKFF) provides financial assistance for artists of color to participate in our professional training programs.
Education Programs
Fall Festival of Shakespeare
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.
Northeast Regional Tour of Shakespeare
Since 1982, Shakespeare & Company has sent touring productions of Shakespeare’s plays, along with a variety of related workshops, into middle and high schools, colleges, large-scale performance venues, and community centers all over the Northeast and beyond. These performances reach more than 20,000 students, teachers, and audience members each year.
Virtual Schools Programming
Bring Shakespeare and Company’s nationally recognized Education programs to your students wherever they are with our new Virtual Schools Programming. Engage with our most popular programs, reimagined for distance learning while retaining the dynamic connection between the students and the language of Shakespeare.
Professional Development Workshops
Designed for Teachers, Directors and Teaching Artists to help create dynamic, engaging learning experiences of Shakespeare in the classroom and on the stage. Participants in this program are eligible for Professional Development points. Shakespeare & Company’s unique and long-developed techniques awaken the emotional, imaginative and physical dimensions of the text. Teachers learn appropriate strategies to help students experience the power and beauty of Shakespeare’s language, and to engage with the texts in deeper and more personal ways. Brought back to the classroom and rehearsal rooms, these approaches engage students’ own multiple intelligences, enabling a more passionate, personal, and comprehensive experience of the characters and understanding of the plays. These workshops are designed by Kevin G. Coleman, Shakespeare & Company’s Education Director. Other master teachers, actors, and directors from the Company may join the faculty to help participants to experience, and then develop, their own dynamic and engaging learning experiences of Shakespeare in the classroom and on the stage.
School Residencies
Ranging from one-day to ten-week programs, school residencies offer elementary, middle and high school students an innovative and meaningful introduction to Shakespeare, both in and out of the classroom. Teams of teaching artists, professional directors, actors, and technical staff work in collaboration with educators to introduce students to Shakespeare in ways that are active, imaginative, and personally meaningful.
Spring Young Company
This program was designed for high school students who are looking to begin or continue their actor training. These young actors work on voice, movement, text, scene work, and more, often finding what they haven’t found elsewhere before.
Shakespeare & Young Company, Summer Conservatory
Shakespeare & Young Company Summer Conservatory is designed to bring Shakespeare & Company’s methodology to burgeoning young actors ages 17-20. Please Note: The 2022 Summer Conservatory Program has been postponed until Summer 2023.
Riotous Youth
These fun and inspiring 1-, 2- and 3-week summer theater programs introduce students ages 6 to 17 to Shakespeare's language, his stories, characters, and themes using imaginative and playful methods. Riotous Company is a more advanced 3-week program for high school students. Scroll down to see Summer Program Dates and Information. To Enroll your student into our Summer 2022 Riotous Youth Program, follow the RED APPLY NOW button to the right. To Make a Balance Due Payment for an enrolled student, follow the RED MAKE A PAYMENT button to the right.
Shakespeare in the Courts
In conjunction with the Berkshire Juvenile Court System, adolescent offenders study, rehearse, and perform Shakespeare as an alternative to more punitive consequences.
Meet the Faculty
Ariel Bock
Ariel is the Producing Associate at Shakespeare & Company. Roles include: Rose in The Children, Mom in Ugly Lies the Bone, Mistress Quickly in Henry IV pts 1&2, Goneril in King Lear, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Elizabeth in Richard III, Audrey in As You Like it, Hippolyta in Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, Mistress Quickly in Merry Wives of Windsor, Paulina in The Winters Tale, Ruth in Private Eyes, the Woman in Laughing Wild, Arlene in Off the Map. At Mixed Company: Ramona in Zara Spook and Other Lures and Eileen in The Cripple of Inishmaan. With the Ensemble for the Romantic Century in NYC: Nadezhda VonMeck in None But the Lonely Heart, as well as Fanny Mendelsohn, Emily Dickinson, Sonia Tolstoy and Anna Akhmatova. A Designated Linklater Voice Teacher, she has been on the faculty of Dartmouth College and MIT.
Shakespeare & Company is a professional live theatre company in the heart of the Berkshires, presenting a vibrant summer performance season featuring the works of Shakespeare in repertory with classic and contemporary plays. The Company offers one of the most extensive actor training programs by a regional theatre in the country, and is also home to an award-winning and nationally recognized theatre-in-education program.