Alabama Shakespeare Festival

Montgomery, Alabama

Alabama Shakespeare Festival (ASF), located in Montgomery, Alabama , stimulates, embraces, and enlightens young and old throughout the region and nation by performing Shakespeare, classical, and contemporary plays; serving as an educational resource and lifelong learning center; and fostering the development of new works. Since its inception, ASF has garnered a reputation for staging productions of Shakespeare's plays that are vibrant, artistically innovative, and, above all, crystal clear. As the largest Shakespeare festival in the Southeast, ASF is in a unique position to showcase the works of the Bard to diverse audiences who may not otherwise have the opportunity to experience Shakespeare. Along with producing Shakespeare and the classics, in 1991, ASF created the Southern Writers' Project (SWP), a new-play program that commissions, develops, and produces new plays about the South. ASF's education department creates arts-education programs that attract students and teachers back to ASF year after year. Alfa SchoolFest, a comprehensive, student-matinee program that provides students with subsidized tickets, is the cornerstone of ASF's educational programs, with 54,000 students participating this season. The success of Camp Shakespeare , a week-long day camp where students study an abridged Shakespeare play, has resulted in the development of two new programs: Shakespeare Extreme, a classical acting program for teens, and Much Ado about Shakespeare, an in-school version of Camp Shakespeare. In addition, ASF Academy offers acting classes to students and adults.

Thanks to the Shakespeare for a New Generation grant, Alabama Shakespeare Festival will provide funding for 1,000 students from 10 public schools in the Alabama Black Belt to experience a performance of Othello or The Comedy of Errors. Prior to the students attending the performance, a team of professional actors will visit each school and conduct text-based workshops. In order for students to enjoy and profit from the performance, they must be able to understand and delight in Shakespeare's language, as well as to see a connection between their own lives and the situations, characters, and choices depicted on stage. The workshops will be interactive and will provide a model for the teachers to use in future classes to help students learn how to de-code Shakespeare's language on their own.

Visit them at: www.asf.net