Photographs of 2005 workshopArauco domado
courtesy of Chris Bennion
A passion for language is the only requirement.
Each summer YSW gathers students together to create a new community bound by a love of words. Because there is no tuition, YSW is uniquely positioned to draw together students from all walks of life. The only requirement is a passion for language.
Young Shakespeare Workshop empowers its participants to take ownership of rich, exciting, beautiful, subtle, dangerous, passionate language. The kind of ownership that only physical performance can give, spoken to an audience, lived in the moment of performance, breathing the life within the words as your own. Students begin work with sonnets, progressing to speeches and scenes during their first year, to work on an entire play as a returning student. The First Year Students meet for seven weeks, five days a week, three hours a day for text, voice, and fencing classes, culminating in a recital of sonnets, speeches, and scenes at the Broadway Performance Hall. The Returning Students produce and perform a Shakespearean play, touring it to a variety of venues indoor and out. Last summer's play was King Lear.
During the academic year, Young Shakespeare also provides school and after-school based residencies. In 2006 & 07 we worked closely with LA teachers at Chief Sealth and Cleveland high schools whose classes were studying Romeo and Juliet and Othello, we also produced an out of school adaptation of Chrisopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine, the Great parts I & II. We are returning this spring to Chief Sealth. Our thanks to Arts Corps for partnering with us to make it possible.
This summer we will also continue for a third year, Tragicomedia, a new extension project in Spanish mirroring our first year Shakespeare program.
Now celebrating its seventeenth year, the Workshop is an organization whose purpose is to awaken the hearts and minds of the young to the power and beauty of language. YSW is honored to be recognized in 2004, in 2005, and again in 2007, as a Coming Up Taller Semifinalist by the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and its partner agencies, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, National Endowment for the Arts, and National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Young Shakespeare Workshop subsists entirely on donations. Any donations are greatly appreciated. Please contact us at 206-284-7580 for further information.
Thank you to the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, the E.K. & Lillian F. Bishop Foundation, and the US Bancorp Foundation and the Washington Women\'s Foundation, for support of our endeavors in 2005. We also would like to recognize support for summer 2006 and 2007 from the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and the Department of Neighborhoods Matching Fund for support of our new program Tragicomedia and the Arauco community project. Likewise 4Culture for Sustained Suppport in 2006 & 2007.
