NEA awards $30,000 to Shakespeare & Company
Lenox, Mass — The National Endowment for the Arts’ Learning in the Arts Program has awarded $30,000 to Shakespeare & Company’s 20th annual Fall Festival of Shakespeare. This is the 14th year the NEA has generously provided support targeted specifically for Shakespeare & Company’s Education Program.The Festival is a nine-week program involving over 500 students in Massachusetts and New York, culminating in a four-day marathon of 10 fully mounted Shakespeare plays in the Company’s Founders’ Theatre November 20-23. Performances in the participating schools run November 13-15. For tickets and Festival information please call the Box Office at (413) 637-3353 or visit the website at www.shakespeare.org. In-school performances and Founders’ schedules are also available online. Please check out this link and see some of the recent student interviews as well as Director of Education, Kevin Coleman, speak about the Festival and what it means to them. This is a link to our 2007 & 2008 Festival blog: http://www.shakespeare.org/blog/2008/09/20th-annual-fall-festival-of-shakespeare-now-underway/.
Shakespeare & Company is founded upon a belief in the power of language, and this approach is reflected in the Fall Festival. Students are encouraged to dig into Shakespeare’s works from the inside out, breaking down the language and mentally chewing on it so as to taste the humor, violence, heartbreak and transcendent beauty of plays written over 400 years ago. Daily rehearsals focus on students’ response to Shakespeare’s text, opening the doorway for the essential personal connection to works that students may have previously written off as inaccessible. Led by Shakespeare & Company’s Director of Education Kevin G. Coleman, Education Program Administrator Jo Ann Valle and School Program Manager Alexandra Lincoln, the Fall Festival is specifically designed as a celebration rather than a competition between the schools. This season’s participating high schools include Chatham High School, Mt. Everett Regional High School, Mt. Greylock Regional High School, Lee High School, Lenox Memorial High School, Monument Mountain Regional High School, North Andover High School, Springfield Central High School, Taconic High School, and Taconic Hills High School.
“As we head toward a successful culmination of our 20th Fall Festival of Shakespeare, it’s a time to look back and thank the people and organizations who have helped us get to where we are. We are incredibly honored and grateful for this recent gift from the NEA and their continued support for all of our Education Programs, in particular our Fall Festival of Shakespeare,” said Coleman. “It is this kind of support that makes the Festival possible, and will not only bring Shakespeare vibrantly alive for hundreds of students this year but it also reinforces the fact that arts in education is essential to the full development of all our children.”
The National Endowment for the Arts supports American theater by funding the work of theater companies of all sizes, genres and esthetics, and is committed to the goal of enabling all Americans to enrich their lives through the arts. The Learning In the Arts program’s two goals are to invite children to celebrate and participate in a central part of their cultural inheritance, and to develop their social and academic skills through the arts. For more information on the National Endowment for the Arts, go to www.NEA.gov.
Shakespeare & Company’s Education Program has reached nearly one million students since 1978 with innovative performances, workshops, and residencies. It received the prestigious 2006 Coming Up Taller Award presented by First Lady Laura Bush at the White House in January 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 Massachusetts Cultural Council and its local cultural councils, Country Curtains and The Red Lion Inn, and many other local corporations, private foundations, and individuals.
