Kentucky Shakespeare Festival

Louisville, Kentucky

Kentucky Shakespeare Festival enhances community life by providing accessible, professional, classical theater and quality educational outreach programs. The festival fundamentally believes that art is for everyone, not just those who can afford to pay the cost of a ticket, tuition, or program fee. For 47 years, the company has created programs that provide opportunities for everyone, regardless of their financial or physical limitations, to view and participate in the works of William Shakespeare. Kentucky Shakespeare Festival takes a four-fold approach to art and the works of Shakespeare: the work must be available and accessible to its diverse community regardless of their financial or physical limitations; it must entertain; it must educate and enlighten; and it must change people's lives.

As part of Shakespeare for a New Generation, Kentucky Shakespeare Festival will produce a 90-minute version of The Tempest that will invite audiences to rediscover the beauty, humanity, and proclaim with renewed awe and innocence: “How beauteous mankind is!” Now in its 20th season of touring, the festival will continue to bring the work directly to the schools. With a team of six professional actors, The Tempest will be designed to meet the needs of each school's facility, and educational workshops, post-performance question-and-answer sessions, and study guides will be provided to the schools that the festival will reach in Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, and Tennessee. The accompanying educational workshops will examine Shakespeare's works and explain how the influences of time and place are reflected in them. During the course of an eight-week artist-in-residence series, students will explore how the Elizabethan world and its politics, the plague, and the church combined with the emerging ideas of humanism to influence Shakespeare's work. Artist Educator Carrie Nath will work with five high schools, while Artist Educator Jonlee Cope will work with five middle schools. Each artist will visit each school two times a week for one-and-half hours per visit and will reach students of varying abilities and backgrounds.

Educational Residencies for Juvenile Offenders

Kentucky Shakespeare Festival will implement an eight-hour residency for the incarcerated boys at Audubon Youth Development Center. They will meet four hours a week over the course of five months. Theater artists will work under the consultation of a drama therapist to implement the curriculum and conduct rehearsals that lead the boys through an in-depth exploration of Shakespeare's The Tempest. During the residency, the boys will visit the inmates of the adult program, Shakespeare Behind, where students and inmates will be encouraged to discuss the conflicts embedded within the text and how the characters accept or decline responsibility for their actions.

Visit them at: www.kyshakes.org