Shakespearience
Student Matinees
Youth and Family Series
SHAKESPEARIENCE: Student Matinees 
You’ve read them on the page, now see them onstage! The Shakespeare Theatre Company welcomes teachers and students to experience the excitement of live performance through SHAKESPEARIENCE, our Student Matinee and Family Series. SHAKESPEARIENCE is designed to increase access to classic theatre and the theatrical process for middle and high school students and teachers in D.C., Maryland and Virginia. The program includes subsidized tickets, preparatory materials and in-school workshops. Supplemental materials are provided free of charge to all participants. This season we are thrilled to offer students the opportunity to see two of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night, as well as a Greek masterpiece by Euripides, Ion, on stage in the newly opened Sidney Harman Hall. The SHAKESPEARIENCE Student Matinee program for public schools includes:
- A mandatory in-school pre-performance workshop with a Shakespeare Theatre Company teaching artist to help prepare your students for the performance
- A post-performance talk-back with the actors immediately following the matinee
- An optional post-performance in-school workshop
- First Folio: Teacher Curriculum Guides for all three plays
The SHAKESPEARIENCE Student Matinee program for independent, parochial and home schools includes:
- Reduced-price tickets
- A post-performance talk-back with the actors immediately following the matinee
- First Folio: Teacher Curriculum Guides for all three plays
- Optional pre- and post-performance workshops (fee-based)
The Plays Romeo and Juliet
 View a video about the play
Experience the magic of the Elizabethan stage as Shakespeare would have. Inspired by the historical tradition of all-male casts, Associate Artistic Director David Muse stages this poetic masterwork with men playing all of the roles. Romeo and Juliet follows its star-crossed lovers as they hurtle from their first shy glances to their last heartrending kiss. Caught between their feuding families, Romeo and Juliet desperately struggle to build a world insulated from the violence, but their love races toward a final confrontation with fate. This production promises to be an unforgettable exploration of the world’s greatest and most enduring love story. Twelfth Night
 View a video about the play
One of Shakespeare greatest comedies, Twelfth Night ponders love lost and found. A shipwreck separates twins Viola and Sebastian, but tragedy quickly turns to comedy when they wash up in a land turned upside-down by love. With raucous antics, ravishing language and rich characters, Shakespeare creates a bittersweet tale of laughter and longing. Director Rebecca Bayla Taichman returns after her “chic, funny and marvelously acted” production of The Taming of the Shrew (The Washington Post).
Ion
 View a video about the play
Introduce your students to the world of Greek drama through Ion, a remarkable romance of loss and reconciliation by the Greek playwright Euripides. Abandoned by his parents, Ion grows up as an orphan at Apollo’s temple. But when his mother appears in search of a prophecy, Ion must confront both his painful past and his unexpected destiny. Euripides’ plot twists and turns with jealousy and revenge before culminating in a reunion scene of deep tenderness and pathos. Ethan McSweeny returns to direct his second Greek tragedy for STC, after his “stunning… acutely theatrical” production of The Persians in 2006. What teachers have said about SHAKESPEARIENCE:
The [SHAKESPEARIENCE] program helps meet valuable objectives such as providing tools for teaching the existing curriculum in more effective, engaging and student-centered ways; establishing or expanding our teachers’ and students’ ability to use a theatrical process as both a learning activity and an assessment tool in the classroom; expanding their personal, cultural and historical perspectives; and creating an environment that engages students more actively in their own education.
Janeece Docal, Academy Coordinator and English Department Chair
Bell Multicultural Senior High School TO APPLY:
Click here if you are with a public school.
Click here if you are with an independent school. Youth and Family Series
The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Youth and Family Series (YFS) introduces younger audiences to classic literature from around the world through engaging, age-appropriate productions. YFS productions are 60 to 90 minutes in length and are offered for school groups during the week and for families on the weekends. Developmentally appropriate workshops and materials are available through the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Education Department. The YFS production for the 2008-2009 season has yet to be announced but please check back this fall for details. Click here for the online archive of First Folio: Teacher Curriculum Guides.
For more information about SHAKESPEARIENCE, please call the Education Department at 202.547.5688.
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