Located in The Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, Shakespeare & Company is one of the largest Shakespeare Festivals in the country, operating year-round. The organization attracts more than 60,000 patrons annually, with a core of over 150 artists. The Company develops and performs Shakespeare, classics, contemporary, and new plays of social and political significance, generating opportunities for collaboration between actors, directors and designers of all races, nationalities and backgrounds. Shakespeare & Company embraces the core values of Shakespeare’s work: collaboration, commitment to language, visceral experience and classical ideals, expressed with physical prowess and an embodied contemporary voice.
Heart-stirring, crowd-rousing, life-changing theatre-in-education programs are a bedrock tradition at Shakespeare & Company. Our Education Program brings the classical poetry and plays of Shakespeare into the lives of as many students and teachers as possible in ways that are personally meaningful, educationally inspiring, and theatrically compelling. One of the most extensive arts-in-education programs in the northeast, Shakespeare & Company reaches more than 40,000 students and teachers each year with innovative, socially responsive, and educationally challenging performances, workshops and residencies. The Program has been nationally recognized as an innovative leader in the field of integrating theatre arts into education, and teaching Shakespeare. Since the program was founded in 1978, nearly one million elementary, middle, and high school students have taken part. Our program immerses students in the world of Shakespeare and classical theatre in the most active, engaging, and personally meaningful ways.
The Company offers one of the most extensive actor training programs by a regional theatre in the country, where professionals from all over the world come to train with the organization known for its original, in-depth, classical training and performance methods.The aesthetic of the Company was created within the training devised by Tina Packer and the Master Teachers, and it is through these programs that the aesthetic is continually investigated, redefined, and reinvigorated. Through the Center for Actor Training, Shakespeare & Company’s performance artists, education artists, and artist-managers develop a common artistic vocabulary and coherent approach to performing Shakespeare that provides a solid foundation for their work. Actors, directors, writers, and teachers from all over the world come to work with the Company’s faculty to train not only their voices and their bodies with a daily regimen of demanding classes, but also to delve deeply into their own imaginations, intellects, and emotional lives. Shakespeare & Company’s curriculum is internationally recognized as a deeply effective training experience for actors who aspire to bring their talent, intuition, and spirit to a higher level.
