Alabama Shakespeare Festival

Montgomery, Alabama

Alabama Shakespeare Festival began in 1972 as a summer theater in Anniston, Alabama. In 1985, it moved into a permanent theater in Montgomery, Alabama, and began producing plays year-round. The festival produces Shakespeare, classic, contemporary, and new plays, and creates educational programs that attract students and teachers from across the region. Alfa SchoolFest, a comprehensive student-matinee program, provides students with subsidized tickets and is the cornerstone of the festival's educational programs. Camp Shakespeare is a one-week camp where students study and produce an abridged version of a Shakespeare play, and has resulted in the development of three new camps: Camp Shakespeare Extreme, a classical acting program for teens; Broadway South, a musical-theater camp; and Weekend Warrior, where students learn stage combat. The newest educational program, Class Acts, sends teaching artists into the classrooms to teach a selected work of literature that is also part of Alfa SchoolFest. In addition, Alabama Shakespeare Festival Academy offers acting classes to students and adults.

As part of Shakespeare for a New Generation, Alabama Shakespeare Festival will conduct in-school educational workshops in 10 rural-Alabama high schools. These interactive workshops will focus on the text and themes of Shakespeare's Hamlet and All's Well That Ends Well. The festival's education staff and actors will use theater exercises to draw students into the complex themes of revenge, moral corruption, love, and jealousy that are central to the plays and make the students comfortable with the Bard's language. Following the workshops, students will travel to Alabama Shakespeare Festival to attend a professional production of one of these two plays.

Visit them at: www.asf.net