The Denver Center for the Performing Arts

Denver, Colorado

Denver Center Theatre Company (DCTC) is a division of The Denver Center for the Performing Arts and is the principal resident professional theater in the Rocky Mountain region. Its mission is fourfold: to create theater that excites, engages, and inspires audiences throughout Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region; to produce an eclectic season of 12 productions that reflect both the diversity of the community and the challenges facing this country; to support a resident theater company of the highest caliber providing opportunities for leading professionals from across the United States to work in its theaters; and to foster the future of the American theater through the commission, development, and production of new plays and musicals that add to the American canon and through the rigorous training of young artists of exceptional promise who will become the leading professionals of the next generation. The National Theatre Conservatory at the DCTC offers a master's degree in acting, accepting ten students in each year's class; students train for two years and spend their third as company members. The DCTC has included arts in education in its mission since its inception in 1979; its programs include Dramatic Learning, Living History and Elementary School Tour, student matinees, talkbacks, and behind-the-scenes perspectives.

Ten public high schools in the metropolitan Denver area have been selected to participate in Denver Center Theatre Company's Shakespeare for a New Generation project. The play selected is Richard III, which will be produced for the mainstage series in the Stage Theatre during January and February 2009. The schools represent some of the area's most at-risk and diverse populations and are not among DCTC's regular partners for arts-in-education programming. Each of the ten schools will be provided with teacher training, including interactive exercises that focus on Richard III 's themes; structure, scansion and verse; in-school workshops based on DCTC's Dramatic Learning and Living History models; matinee tickets; study guides; and pre- and post-matinee discussions.

Visit them at: www.denvercenter.org