Shakespeare & Company
Location:
Lenox, MA 
Founded in 1978, Shakespeare & Company is a classical theater company dedicated to excellence in performance, education, and training. With a core of more than 150 artists, the company produces innovative and accessible Shakespeare performances that hold language at their center. Shakespeare & Company also produces new works of political and social significance, and, in 2008, inaugurated the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre while simultaneously expanding the performance season to ten months. With an international reputation for providing original, in-depth, classical theater training, the company combines Linklater voice work, text analysis, Alexander movement, fight, dance, clown, and innovative techniques to offer a unique exploration of the actor/audience relationship. It has been working in classrooms and after-school programs for more than 30 years, reaching teachers and students through year-round performances, workshops, and residencies. Core programming includes an extensive nine-week fall festival of Shakespeare and a 15-week New England Tour of Shakespeare. The education program has been recognized as a model in theater arts-in-education by Harvard University's Project Zero. Shakespeare & Company has received honors, such as the prestigious 2005 Commonwealth Award from the state of Massachusetts; the 2006 Coming Up Taller Award for the recognition of its pioneering work with adjudicated juvenile offenders through their Shakespeare in the Courts program; and a “champion of change” from the Arts Education Partnership, GE Foundation, and President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
As part of Shakespeare for a New Generation, Shakespeare & Company will produce A Midsummer Night’s Dream as part of its New England Tour of Shakespeare. The 90-minute performance will be performed by professional actors in multiple roles over three months at approximately 75 schools. The company’s emphasis is on language, pleasure in playing, and the relationship that exists between the actors and the audience, creating rapport with students while making Shakespeare immediate and accessible without dumbing it down. Every performance comes with either of two 45-minute workshops for students: Workshop in Performance, where students create their own Shakespeare performances, and Actor-Audience workshop, in which the company performs several scenes from the play, engages the students in discussion about the scene, and then students are invited to be the directors.
Company Website:
http://www.shakespeare.org 
