November 17 through 20, Shakespeare & Company’s Fall Festival of Shakespeare will once again offer live performances to the public at the Tina Packer Playhouse.
Now in its 34th year, the Fall Festival of Shakespeare is a residency program at 11 area high schools in Massachusetts and New York, wherein a cadre of 22 Shakespeare & Company directors, seven costume designers, and six production coordinators support nearly 400 students as they stage full productions of Shakespeare’s plays.
Nine weeks of after-school rehearsals, joint common classes, set-builds, and more culminate in full-scale productions at each school and on the main stage at the Shakespeare & Company campus in Lenox, Mass.
Kevin G. Coleman, director of Education at Shakespeare & Company, said the Fall Festival of Shakespeare “joyfully and profoundly engages students in personally meaningful, educationally rigorous, and dramatically compelling experiences of Shakespeare’s work.”
“The festival is truly a celebration, never a competition,” he said. “Students from multiple schools work collaboratively to meet Shakespeare the playwright. They unpack and present the humor and the heartbreak, as well as the intensity and humanity of these unparalleled plays.”
The participating high schools of the 34th Fall Festival of Shakespeare, including Pittsfield High School, which joins for the first time:
- Berkshire Waldorf School, Great Barrington, Mass.
- Chatham High School, Chatham, N.Y.
- Lenox Memorial Middle and High School, Lenox, Mass.
- Lee High School, Lee, Mass.
- Monument Mountain Regional High School, Great Barrington, Mass.
- Mount Everett Regional High School, Sheffield, Mass.
- Mount Greylock Regional High School, Williamstown, Mass.
- Pittsfield High School, Pittsfield, Mass.
- Springfield Central High School, Springfield, Mass.
- Taconic High School, Pittsfield, Mass.
- Taconic Hills Jr./Sr High School, Craryville, N.Y.
Tickets are on sale now for Fall Festival performances at Shakespeare & Company from Thursday, Nov. 17 through Sunday, Nov. 20. Individual show tickets and multi-show passes are available, at both general admission and student prices.
Masks are required at all performances of the 34th Fall Festival of Shakespeare. The Fall Festival of Shakespeare will also be live-streamed via CTSB, and through the Cablecast app on Roku, iOS, Apple TV, Android, and Amazon Fire TV.
For more information, visit shakespeare.org, or call the Box Office at (413) 637-3353.
Schedule:
Thursday, November 17
- 6:15 pm – Lee Middle & High School’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- 8:30 pm – Berkshire Waldorf High School’s Much Ado About Nothing
Friday, November 18
- 6:15 pm – Mount Greylock Regional High School’s As You Like It
- 8:30 pm – Taconic High School’s Julius Caesar
Saturday, November 19
- 1:15 pm – Monument Mountain Regional High School’s Henry V
- 3:30 pm – Springfield Central High School’s Love’s Labor’s Lost
- 6:15 pm – Pittsfield High School’s Twelfth Night
- 8:30 pm – Mount Everett Regional High School’s Macbeth
Sunday, November 20
- 12:00 pm – Lenox Memorial Middle & High School’s Hamlet
- 2:15 pm – Taconic Hills Jr/Sr High School’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- 4:30 pm – Chatham High School’s Macbeth
- 6:15 pm – The Closing Reverence
Photo Caption: Shakespeare & Company’s Director of Education and Founding Member Kevin G. Coleman leads students from various area high schools in a class on Fight & Movement as part of the 34th Fall Festival of Shakespeare. Photo by Katie McKellick.
About Shakespeare & Company
Shakespeare & Company was founded in 1978 by Tina Packer and a group of founding theater professionals. Located in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, the Company offers performance, education, and actor-training opportunities year-round, and attracts more than 40,000 patrons annually with a core of more than 150 artists.
