In a literate society, language gives us power. For the students who participate in taking on Shakespeare’s language as their own through the rehearsal process and performance is an act of real empowerment.
Festival Guiding Principles
- One of the best ways for students to enjoy Shakespeare—to learn something about the characters, to make the language leap—is to perform the plays. The Festival will provide a structure to promote performance.
- The Festival day will be designed so that the students are each other’s audience. Watching seven other scenes is as educational as performing one’s own. Scenes from different plays are scheduled each day, so the students come away with an idea of the range and texture of Shakespeare’s work.Careful scheduling will also ensure that students from different geographical areas and different kinds of schools share the Festival experience.
- The Festival is fun, a celebration, not a competition. In the attempt to keep it that way and in the spirit of the playwright who provided a good time to every theater-goer, the commentators will present recognition awards for excellence of every kind, and each student will go home with a tangible token of the day they trod the boards, backstage or onstage. We want the students to have a good time, a great time, and maybe the time of their life.
Performances will run for 25 minutes. Abridged versions of the plays or theme-based montages are welcomed, although all text should be in Shakespeare's original language.
While we regard the festival as a celebration of the Bard and not a competition, festival commentators—drawn from the professional theater and Shakespeare education communities—recognize exceptional performances, student directors, and good spirit amongst the students with selected awards at the end of each day. They are also available to share feedback with the students.
The opportunity to collaborate with fellow students, to discover a play together, and then to perform in front of others and share that experience with students from different schools and backgrounds is of long-term educational value. Whether on stage or in a classroom, this festival will provide the natural culmination to performance-based teaching of Shakespeare.
Festival Acceptance Policy
In order to be as fair as possible, we’ve outlined the priorities that we use to accept schools to the Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park Secondary Schools Shakespeare Festival. Please keep in mind that these are only guidelines; we consider each school individually.
1. Diversity and Inclusion. Our first obligation is to serve the students and teachers who live and work next to us, and also to ensure that schools from as many parts of the state as possible are represented. We also want to ensure a balance of students from all backgrounds (large and small schools, urban and rural schools, etc.)
2. First-come, first-served. After other categories have been taken into account, we accept registrations in the order in which they are postmarked.
