The North Carolina Shakespeare Festival

High Point, North Carolina

The North Carolina Shakespeare Festival was founded in 1977 and, since that time, has presented more than 160 mainstage productions performed in repertory—the vast majority of which have been the works of Shakespeare—as well as an annual production of A Christmas Carol. For 30 years, The North Carolina Shakespeare Festival has toured to schools throughout the state with scene selections from Shakespeare's most studied plays. The festival's GlobeWorks program, previously known as The Wooden O, provided students and teachers with practical teaching tools and living visual aids to support the classroom curriculum and meet the state standards. This touring experience prepared the festival to aspire to the next level, as represented by the inauguration of the Shakespeare To Go school tour. Shakespeare To Go brings a production and accompanying workshops to schools in North and South Carolina.

With support from Shakespeare for a New Generation, The North Carolina Shakespeare Festival will produce 60-minute versions of Hamlet and The Taming of the Shrew for the 2010 Shakespeare To Go tour. The tour will travel to more than 50 high schools across North Carolina. Modern dress and live music will combine with an ensemble of six professional actors to showcase the works of Shakespeare as vital and relevant to these student audiences. Each actor doubles or triples his/her roles, showing theatrical versatility, and the actors will be cast across gender to give the modern audiences a flavor of the cross-gender casting that was common in the all-male companies of Shakespeare's day. Workshops will be offered in conjunction with the performances, giving students the opportunity to try on these staging conventions and reinforcing their understanding of Shakespeare's plays as works to be experienced, rather than just books to be read.

Visit them at: www.ncshakes.org