Photographs of Arauco domado
courtesy of Chris Bennion
A passion for language is the only requirement.
Summer 2010 will soon be here! Audition/interviews will be in April and May (go to First Year page for more info).
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 Twelfth Night.
During the academic year, Young Shakespeare also provides school and after-school based residencies. This year we are continuing our work developing an after-school Drama Club for a second year at Cleveland H.S. Our aim this time round is to present a production of Hamlet in May of 2010. At Franklin H.S. in January we also presented a Sonnet Lecture/Workshop with the help of YSW alumni and current students.
In 2008 and again in 2009 we worked closely with LA teachers at Chief Sealth and Cleveland high schools whose classes were studying Romeo and Juliet. YSW also helped form a drama club in 2009 at Cleveland to produce a spring performance. Our special thanks to the Norcliffe Foundation for their support in 2008 and 2009 to make our residencies there possible. Arts Corps and Youngstown Cultural Arts Center also joined together and pitched in to provide a project performance space for Chief Sealth students who had no access to one. Thank you!
This summer we will also continue Tragicomedia, an extension project in Spanish mirroring our first year Shakespeare program.
We also don''t want to leave out YSW's newly formed alumni Revolving Company. We launched our first tour in 2009, with help from a 4Culture Special Projects grant and a Civic Partnership award from the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, with performances of Romeo & Juliet for Sealth, Cleveland, Franklin, Southwest Interagency and Shorewood H.S. students.
Now celebrating its nineteenth 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, 2005, 2007, 2009 and again in 2010, 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 we wish to thank 4Culture for Sustained Suppport in 2006 & 2007. In 2008, 2009 and 2010 we again received support from the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture for Youth Arts program support as well as a two year Civic Partnership award for 2009-10. 4 Culture helped us launch the Revolving Company project in 2008/09 with a Special Projects grant and the Norcliffe Foundation has supported our residency work at Chief Sealth and Cleveland High Schools for two years in 2008 and 2009. Our current after-school project at Cleveland H.S. is made possible by funding provided by the National Endowment for the Arts through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Thank you to the Mayors Office for helping to facilitate this!
