SHAKESPEARE IS BACK!

The budget for Newton North and South's quarter century of performing Shakespeare together has been restored by the School Committee and Board of Aldermen. Thanks to the Committee and Board for having the wisdom and courage
to make this happen!

This year's North/South Shakespeare
collaboration is scheduled for
MAY 14-16 at South.
Director and title TBA.

CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE INVOLVED IN
ROMEO AND JULIET 2008
FOR A SPECTACULAR SHOW!

South Stage initiated the collaboration with Shakespeare & Company and Newton North in the 1982-83 school year. Working with a combined cast from North and South, Kevin Coleman, Education Director of Shakespeare & Company, launched Romeo and Juliet, the first in an unbroken line of Shakespeare collaborations which have challenged students, delighted audiences, generated friendships, brought North and South together in a common enterprise, and fostered interest in theatre across town. As a result, hundreds of Newton students have rehearsed and performed Shakespeare, worked with professional directors, made friends in both Newton high schools, discovered the power that lies in their voice, and explored the depth, power, and muscularity of Shakespeare's text. Thousands, literally, have witnessed this remarkable process in the audience.

As dozens of professional directors have shown us since 1983, "Shakespeare is the Olympics for actors." Shakespeare's text demands a combined physical, emotional, intellectual, and vocal commitment beyond that of modern plays or musicals. It is Shakespeare & Company's specific belief that combining disciplined, sustained voice work with Shakespeare does more than bring Shakespeare alive for students; it aims at bringing students alive to the human possibilities within themselves as they confront Shakespeare's text. As Kevin Coleman writes, "Adolescence is most like the Renaissance. We seldom repeat its intensity and extremity, its excitement and its pain. What better material, what better "script" to put into the hands of adolescents than Shakespeare? The accuracy with which he reveals our thoughts and feelings, our human nature, teaches who and what we are, and consequently what we may become. In the truest sense of the word, he educates."

South Stage and Theatre Ink have been producing Shakespeare together for twenty-four consecutive years and are extremely proud to continue raising the bar through this extraordinary tradition!

Last updated on August 15, 2008