$40,000 Dana foundation grant enhances Shakespeare & Company’s spring Residency Programs
Lenox – The Dana Foundation is providing a generous $40,000 grant to enable the Education Program to enhance its Residencies program by, over the course of two years, creating a curriculum implementing a comprehensive training course for arts educators who work with students in elementary and middle schools. In an environment where school budgets have been shrinking and arts education programs are often imperiled, this hands-on training program will fill an existing gap in regional professional development opportunities for arts educators, providing them with a much-needed opportunity to develop the tools they need to be effective in the classroom.Developed and overseen by Associate Director of Education Jenna Ware, this 95-hour course of training will take place before, during and after the 2009 Spring Residencies. As part of the training, master teachers will mentor participating arts educators throughout their residencies. The training course will build upon and codify in a definitive handbook the distinct techniques developed over the years by the Company’s nationally recognized Education Program, making these techniques into a model that can be replicated in other parts of the country. As part of this two-year grant, the 2008 team of Residency artists has begun creating this curriculum.
The inaugural year of this groundbreaking training course will be geared toward arts educators who have successfully completed at least one of the Company’s actor training programs or directed in the Fall Festival of Shakespeare, as well as arts educators who are unfamiliar with Shakespeare & Company’s education and training techniques. Teachers interested in uncovering compelling ways of exposing students to Shakespeare in the classroom also will be welcomed to participate.
Meanwhile, another year of Shakespeare & Company’s popular spring Elementary and Middle School Residency programs will conclude next week with performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Monument Valley Middle School in Great Barrington (413-528-4743) on May 6 and 7. Public performances at 6:30pm each day are preceded by in-school performances. Additionally, the latest after-school residency at Lenox Middle School culminates on May 23 with the performance of a specially adapted collection of folk tales from around the world.
In addition, sessions in other schools around the county have already concluded successfully. Williamstown Elementary School performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream (with its entire fourth grade class participating) on April 11. Students at Upper Cape Technical School and Richmond School also worked on Midsummer as well as Romeo and Juliet during their residency programs.
For more information on the Company’s Residency program and other Education Programs please contact Associate Director of Education Jenna Ware at (413) 637-1199 ext. 172 or education@shakespeare.org. The six-to-ten-week residencies, which run February through May of each year, include over 300 students and this year are led by Shakespeare & Company Education artists Meg O’Connor, Sarah Brown, Dana Harrison, Michael Toomey, Jonathan Croy, Risher Reddick and Tom Jaeger.
Company Teaching Artists are assigned to each participating school and work with students during their regular class time once or twice a week for up to ten weeks. During the early part of the Residency, students explore Shakespeare’s language, themes, and characters through an active and imaginative exploration involving text work, voice, stage fight, and dance. In the longer residencies, entire classes participate in a final production, and every student plays a part.
Final performances celebrate the students’ work as actors. Leading roles are shared by many students, and major speeches are shared by the whole group. The plays are cut to accommodate the performers, but are not altered textually. Residencies are tailored to suit the individual needs of the students at each school, in collaboration with classroom teachers.
The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation with principal interests in brain science, immunology, and arts education. As part of its Rural Initiative, The Dana Foundation grants professional development programs for arts educators in rural areas of the United States. The Foundation is interested primarily in training for in-school arts specialists and professional artists who teach the performing arts to students pre-K to12 in the public schools.
Shakespeare & Company’s Education programs have reached nearly one million students since 1978 with innovative performances, workshops, and residencies. A 2000 study by Harvard University recommended that its programs should serve as models to be replicated nationally. The Education Program received the prestigious 2006 Coming Up Taller Award presented by First Lady Laura Bush at the Whitehouse in January of 2007, and in 2005 it also received the Commonwealth Award, the highest award for excellence in the arts, sciences and humanities given by the state of Massachusetts. The Education Program has been identified by the Arts Education Partnership and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities as a Champion of Change. The Program is focused on bringing Shakespeare alive and into the lives of as many students and teachers as possible through the active exploration and performance of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare & Company arts-in-education programs receive major support from The National Endowment for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Red Lion Inn and Country Curtains, Berkshire Bank Foundation, The Educational Foundation of America, Legacy Banks Foundation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and its local cultural councils, and many other local corporations, private foundations, and individuals.
