Actors' Shakespeare Project

Founded in 2004, the Actors' Shakespeare Project has produced 35 plays at 18 unconventional “found” venues throughout Greater Boston. Their resident company of actors and teaching artists approaches each play as the centerpiece of a larger community project. The projects include not only the award-winning productions that focus on language, relationships, and storytelling, but a rich set of events, residencies, and outreach programs for both adults and youth that make connections between the plays and our lives here and now. These include open rehearsals, civic dialogue events, workshops, in-school and after-school programs, teacher training, and the company’s Incarcerated Youth at Play program. Actors’ Shakespeare Project was named Best Theater in Boston by The Boston Phoenix and Improper Bostonian in 2011 and received the Eliot Norton for "Best Production" for their 2011-2012 Shakespeare for a New Generation production of Twelfth Night. Their Incarcerated Youth at Play program was named a 2012 National Youth Arts & Humanities Finalist, StayClassy Award Finalist, and received the 2007 Social Innovation Award.

As part of Shakespeare for a New Generation, Actors’ Shakespeare Project will produce Macbeth, directed by Paula Plum and produced at the historic Chevalier Theater in Medford, Massachusetts. They will engage approximately 350 students from ten Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville Schools, including several schools within Massachusetts juvenile justice facilities. Teachers will attend the company’s Summer Teacher Institute at Salem State University in August, then return to classrooms with new performance-based approaches, tools, activities, and evaluation rubrics. All participating schools will receive curriculum guides for Macbeth. Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s SWAT (Shakespeare Weapons and Tactics) Team will make visits to all ten schools for student workshops in preparation of the production in the fall of 2012. Students will reconvene for a shared, multi-school festival after seeing the performance.