Northeast Regional Tour of Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare & the Language That Shaped a World
February 10 – May 1, 2027
Since 1982, Shakespeare & Company has sent touring productions of Shakespeare’s plays, along with a variety of related workshops, into middle and high schools, colleges, large-scale performance venues, and community centers all over the Northeast and beyond. These performances reach more than 20,000 students, teachers, and audience members each year.
About the Tour
2027 Northeast Regional Tour
A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare and the Language That Shaped a World
February 10 – May 1, 2027
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. – Helena
Midsummer embraces multiple worlds, mythical celebrities, magical creatures, domineering parents, young lovers, and working-class Athenians attempting to perform a tragic love story. Shakespeare’s most popular and most often performed comedy around the world, this play has something for everyone! Shakespeare & Company strives for heart-rousing, soul-stirring, and crowd-pleasing dramatic experiences. Our 90-minute production is lively and fast-paced with an emphasis on language, pleasure in playing, and the welcoming relationship between the actors and the audience.
Shakespeare & the Language that Shaped a World
O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a King of infinite space Were it not that I have bad dreams. – Hamlet
Entertaining and stimulating, this 45-minute presentation offers a whirlwind introduction to Shakespeare, his life and times, and why his plays remain the most read, studied, and performed plays in the world. This piece was created to welcome students into Shakespeare’s works on his own terms, not as literature, but as plays to be played. Six actors perform short scenes from a selection of plays, including: Hamlet, Midsummer, Macbeth, Comedy of Errors, Romeo & Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, The Tempest, and a sonnet or two. The scenes are interlaced with compelling information and, of course, the popular misinformation that delights. Seven Actors, Seven Stools, a couple of Broadswords, and a bit of historical information, this exuberant peek into Shakespeare’s world and Elizabethan life is fun and accessible for audience members with little or no experience with Shakespeare, while offering enough depth and insight to please individuals already familiar with Shakespeare. Written by Kevin G. Coleman, Shakespeare & Company’s Director of Education
A one-day package at your school, university, or venue includes:
- A 90-minute performance
- A 15-minute interactive, post-show forum immediately following the performance, which explores the audience’s own insights and observations.
- The choice of one 45-minute workshop with students; the Workshop in Performance (12-50 students) or Exploring the Actor-Audience Relationship (unlimited size)
The Company also offers custom packages that include access to virtual programming, multi-day residences with additional workshops, and more. Contact us for more information about customizing visits to a school’s needs.
Example Schedule: One Shakespeare performance, Post-show Forum, and Actor-Audience Workshop
6 am–Actors Arrive
6 am–9 am Load in / Warmup / Lunch / Fight call / Half hour
9 am–10:30 am performance
10:30 am–10:45 am Post-Show Forum
10:55 am–11:40 am Actor-Audience Workshop
11:45 am–12:30 am Lunch Break for Actors
12:45 pm–2 pm Load out
This schedule may be customized to accommodate school and classroom schedules, as every school has different scheduling challenges. The only hard-and-fast rule is that the Education Artists need at least 2.5 hours in the space ahead of a performance.
Workshops & Teaching Materials
As a part of the day, Education Artists will lead students through one or more 45-minute workshops. If you have any questions about these workshops or are interested in customizing the work, contact us.
Workshop in Performance
In this workshop, each student can succeed and discover that Shakespeare is comprehensible, immediately engaging, and can be outrageously fun. The first exercises are with the whole group, but for most of the workshop, students are divided into smaller groups to work on a piece of text from a Shakespeare play which is then performed for classmates. Education Artists work closely with students to unleash an exciting, immediate, and personal experience of Shakespeare’s language. This workshop works best with 30 to 40 students and teachers, but can work with as few as 12 participants with an absolute maximum of 50 participants.
The Workshop Space
For this workshop, a space large enough for the whole group to form a circle, and to accommodate smaller groups as needed. Students are divided into groups for much of the workshop. Normally, the school auditorium is fine, but sometimes the gymnasium or another alternative space is used.
Exploring the Actor/Audience Relationships
This is an entirely interactive workshop in which students can share their observations, reactions, questions, and dialogue with Education Artists. Driven by the students’ curiosity about the show and with a high level of student participation, students volunteer to work on text on stage, try a fight move, or learn an adapted Court Dance.
This workshop is designed to help students engage with the text in new ways. The activity often includes the actors reperforming brief scenes from the play that the students request, and students are invited to make suggestions for the Education Artists to play out as a way to reinterpret or redirect the scene. The workshop demonstrates the plasticity of theater and the imaginative collaboration among directors, actors, and audiences that is essential to the art form. This workshop can accommodate as many students needed, and Education Artists regularly work with the entire audience following the performance.
The Workshop Space
This workshop is most successful in the performance space following the show, as it allows the actors to utilize the scenic elements in their work with the students.
Teaching Materials
As a part of the tour booking, schools and educators may request digital copies of the Shakespeare & Company Study Guide, prepared by the Education Department and tailored specifically to each production. The Study Guide is designed as a supplemental resource for teachers and students, to be used in conjunction with live performance, in order to help better understand the play and form points of connection between the experiences of modern-day students and the story of the play.
The Study Guide contains a brief synopsis of the play, an introduction to the characters, and a scene-by-scene breakdown of the major events of the play.
It also provides descriptions of exercises used at Shakespeare & Company to explore the text with a selection of scenes to play with in the classroom, along with useful websites and resources for further exploration of themes and connections to current events and everyday life.
Student Matinees
If full, in-school productions aren’t possible, students can still experience the magic of the Northeast Regional Tour of Shakespeare with a student matinee performance at Shakespeare & Company’s Tina Packer Playhouse in Lenox, Mass.
2027 dates include:
- Wednesday, February 10, 10 am – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Friday, February 12, 10 am – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Wednesday, February 17, 10 am – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Friday, March 19, 9:30 am – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Friday, March 19, 12 pm – Shakespeare and the Language That Shaped a World
- Friday, April 16, 10 am – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Friday, April 30, 10 am – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Please contact springtour@shakespeare.org for more information or to book.
Shakespeare's Birthday Bash /
Massachusetts April Break Week
Events include:
- Thursday, April 22
- 10 am – Sensory-friendly / open-captioned performance of Shakespeare and the Language That Shaped a World
- 11:30 am – 1pm – Free Education Workshop: Theater Games and Performance
- Friday, April 23 – Shakespeare’s Birthday Bash
- 10 am – Open-captioned performance of Shakespeare and the Language That Shaped a World
- 11:30 am – 1 pm – Free Education Workshop: Stage Fight and Movement
- 2 pm – Screening of the Fall Festival of Shakespeare documentary, Speak What We Feel
- 5 pm – Cake cutting and celebration
- 6 pm – Open-captioned performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Saturday, April 24
- 2 pm – Sensory-friendly / open-captioned performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- 6pm – Open-captioned performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Massachusetts Cultural Council Grants
The Big Yellow School Bus program provides grants to help schools meet the transportation costs of educational field trips to cultural institutions and events. For more information and an application, visit the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Big Yellow School Bus web page.
Course Gallery
