On the
Road
WORKSHOP
NATIONWIDE
1 DAY
Our National Tour includes a wide variety of workshops that are offered in conjunction with the performances. The workshops are lead by our remarkable teaching artists and members of the tour ensemble. They can be adjusted to fit a specific groups experience level, and all are designed to be open and inviting experiences that will enrich a participants appreciation for the theatre.
We also produce Study Guides for each production. These guides provide classroom teachers with lessons and reproducibles to enhance the theatre-going experience. Pre- and Post-performance activities will help the students focus on both the literary and emotional impact of the piece. Role-playing, text analysis, writing-in-role and other drama-based techniques found in the guide will enhance the teachers' repertoire of exercises and will give students new approaches to literature.
This program is part of Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest
Workshop Styles
STAGE COMBAT
A 60 minute on basic stage combat methodology, this workshop will serve as a hands on exploration of the techniques and philosophy behind stage combat. A fully interactive workshop, the goal is to demonstrate how combat can take place on stage while looking realistic and maintaining safety. This workshop will demonstrate the basic principles of hand-to-hand combat. Participants will be trained to tell a story through the fight while maintaining a character during combat.
PAGE TO STAGE
Beginning with a discussion of the original text, this workshop traces the adaptation process of a non-theatrical text to a script and subsequently, focuses on the process of taking the words in the script and transforming them into the play for performance.
ACTING CLUES IN SHAKESPEARE
The Acting Clues in Shakespeare workshop is meant to give its participants many of the tools they need to research and examine a piece of Shakespearean text. Participants will gain a greater appreciation and understanding of the text. Most of the class will be spent examining several passages from the play, discussing Shakespeare’s use of Iambic Pentameter, Irregularities in Verse, Prose, Antithesis and other literary devices as they relate to the actions, intentions, and emotional life of the character.
LEARNING THROUGH THEATRE
Our Learning Through Theater residency program is a week-long, intensive exploration of one play. Teaching Artists specially trained by The Acting Company spend up to five days working in a school, teaching a hands-on curriculum related to a play in The Acting Company's repertoire. At the end of the week, students attend the play, and have an opportunity to meet and share ideas with the actors in the company.
This residency program is a 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.
“My students have been exposed to a whole new world by experiencing Shakespeare for the first time. It was amazing to see how they readily grasped the techniques and information taught by the teaching artists.”
—Elementary School Teacher, Brooklyn
“Before we worked with real actors I thought Shakespeare was very boring but now, since I learned a little bit about him, I notice Shakespeare is very interesting because of the words he uses and how he writes plays.”
—5th Grade Student
DOWNLOADABLE MATERIALS
Repertory 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 the production.
Repertory Programs
You can download a program for each of our productions in a season here. They include bios of the ensemble and creative team as well as dramaturgical information about the production.
Repertory Scripts
Here are copies of the scripts used for this season’s National Repertory Tour, both Romeo and Juliet and The Three Musketeers. These are the drafts that the artists went into rehearsal with for this process.