Education:
NYC Residencies
The Acting Company is dedicated the development of not only the actor, but the audience. We offer educational opportunities throughout NYC. These include our annual Shakespeare School Tour, one-off workshops, and more immersive residencies.
Both workshops and residencies are cross-curricular drama-based exploration of language, literature, visual art, music, design, and acting. The Teaching Artists use a variety of teaching techniques, modeling new teaching techniques for the classroom teacher and leading the students through experiential learning at its best. In their work with students and teachers, Teaching Artists stress the multidisciplinary and collaborative nature of the theater. Students read, write, improvise, play with language, and explore the play in a variety of ways. Each residency is designed with the classroom teacher to meet the specific curriculum needs of the students.
Workshop Menu
PRIMARY SHAKESPEARE
Primary Shakespeare is a residency for elementary school students, it is designed to be one of the children’s first forays into Shakespeare. Lead by our experienced teaching artists it features games and exercises that are both fun and educational, laying the groundwork for the young students to read and watch Shakespeare in the future.
LEARNING THROUGH THEATER
Learning Through Theater is a residency program where our teaching artists come to the school to work with students in the classroom. The workshops are tailored to the specific needs of the school, and they can be everything from one-day to week-long residencies. Some popular options include:
Acting Clues in Shakespeare’s Language: an introduction to the tools actors use to bring a Shakespearean Speech to Life.
Stage Combat: an introduction to the techniques of stage combat that culminate in building short pieces of their own.
Page-to-Stage: often paired with seeing one of our productions, this workshop centers on exploring how our artists take a play from a piece of text to a living, breathing performance.
THEATER AS CAREER
Theater as a Career offers students a chance to talk with alumni of The Acting Company about the nuts and bolts of the theater as a career. It begins with the artists (often actors, but often including other disciplines) discussing their own paths into the theatre and addressing any specific focus that was asked for by the presenter. It then opens up to questions from the audience and a more general discussion of what a theatrical career entails.
OTHER OPTIONS
All of our education programs are tailored to the needs of specific participants, whether in middle school, high school, college, or adult learners. We invite everyone to learn more about theatre and feel comfortable doing so.
If you have specific education needs or hopes, anything from a specific topic to wanting a longer residency for your students, we are happy to discuss how we can help build something for your community.
Shakespeare School Tour
Each year we send a Shakespeare production on tour into middle and high schools in NYC and across the country. These pared down productions are designed to engage the students on their home ground and are able to be performed in auditoriums, gymnasiums, and even classrooms. Filled with music, fights, and laughter they feature world class ensembles who strive to impart their love of Shakespeare to a new generation.
Booking is available now for our 2026-27 tour, click the button to the right for more information.
OTHER RESOURCES
For Teachers
The Acting Company’s Shakespeare for Teachers professional development workshops empower educators to develop new approaches to teaching the works of William Shakespeare and heightened language through interactive physical and vocal engagement, text analysis of verse and prose, and theater integration techniques.
Study Guides
We create Study Guides for each project filled with information about the play, the playwright, the creative team, and a wide variety of exercises for use both before and after students watch a production. While they are designed as a tool for teachers, these guides are also useful to the theaters and the students themselves.
“Romeo & Juliet is a great story. It has everything that you want like jokes, love, death and even more. That is the most amazing story I ever saw.”
—3rd Grade Student