Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park announces our first Secondary School Shakespeare Festival to be held Saturday, April 14, 2012 in the Burg Theatre on the campus of Oklahoma City University.
Participation in the festival is open to all secondary schools (grades 7-12) in Oklahoma.
The Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park Shakespeare Festival is a non-competitive forum for students in grades 7 - 12 to spend an entire day together engaging in live Shakespeare as actors and as audience members.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
8:00am - 4:30pm
The Burg Theatre on the OCU campus in Oklahoma City
Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park Shakespeare Festival is created in collaboration with the Folger Shakespeare Library, who shares our belief that one of the best ways to enjoy and understand Shakespeare is to perform the plays yourself. Collaborating with classmates to explore Shakespeare's language, and then sharing that experience with students from different schools and backgrounds, is of immense educational value. The festival experience is the natural culmination to the performance-based teaching of Shakespeare.
While drama students are welcome to participate, this is not your typical drama festival. By design, this festival is geared towards English classes who may have never acted before. For us, performance is a means to an end: making Shakespeare's language come alive.
On festival day, eight different schools will perform diverse Shakespeare scenes (15-25 minutes) for their peers. After the last school takes its bows, we celebrate the day's triumphs with a tangible token of participation for every student and prizes for special achievement, awarded by a panel of theatre professionals and educators. In keeping with the day's non-competitive nature, these awards look for unexpected moments of brilliance: the actor who steps up in a small role or the musician who contributes without a single word. The panel will also offer some constructive critique to each group.
Guiding Principles Planning Guide Things to Know Proposed Schedule Registration Form
