Baltimore Shakespeare Festival

Baltimore, Maryland

Baltimore Shakespeare Festival is a non-profit professional theater dedicated to producing quality affordable classical theater in Baltimore City and introducing Maryland schoolchildren to Shakespeare through innovative educational programs both in and out of the classroom. The company presents a year-round season of professional productions with outdoor summer performances in the Meadow at Evergreen House (an established Baltimore tradition), and productions on the Elizabethan Stage in Hampden draw crowds of Shakespeare fans from across the mid-Atlantic region. Baltimore Shakespeare Festival’s small professional theater contract with Actors’ Equity Association makes the company one of just three resident professional theaters in Baltimore City, and the only one to focus on the classics. The company takes great pride in employing more than 100 of the region’s most talented actors, designers, and teaching artists every year. A vital resource to area schools, Baltimore Shakespeare Festival’s education programs serve more than 10,000 Maryland students each year, with programs designed to mentor the next generation of actors, teachers, designers, patrons, and donors.

In spring 2008, Baltimore Shakespeare Festival will produce The Winter’s Tale and provide matinees of the production to approximately 1,000 students from 12 disadvantaged Baltimore City public middle and high schools. The matinee program will provide free tickets, bus transportation, and lunches for all students. Immediately following the matinee, students will participate in a post-show discussion with the actors. Baltimore Shakespeare Festival will create study guides for all students, exploring the life of Shakespeare, themes and characters in the play, the roles of various collaborators in the theatrical process, and methods of aesthetic criticism that students can use to evaluate theatrical productions. Teachers will receive a special guide that details how the matinee program can help them address Maryland Fine-Arts and Literature Content Standards and the Maryland Essential Learner Outcomes. Prior to the matinee, a teaching artist will visit each classroom to prepare students for the matinee experience. In the days following the performance, the same teaching artist, along with two actors from the production, will visit the classroom again to conduct a more intensive question and answer session and a mini-workshop. Baltimore Shakespeare Festival will also develop a companion Web site where educators can access additional materials and activities, find links to other online resources, and post their own ideas and suggestions for teaching Shakespeare. Finally, students will be encouraged to write critiques of the production, which will be posted on the Web site, applying the criteria of recognized aesthetic philosophies as explored in the study guide. 

http://www.baltimoreshakespeare.org/