This year's North/South Shakespeare Collaboration is
Directed by SerahRose Roth May 12th, 13th, and 14th, 2011, at Newton South High School
Auditions: at South, Monday, February 14th 3-5:30
at North, Tuesday, February 15th 3-5:30 Callbacks: at South, Thursday 3pm – 6pm, February 17th Audition Information Audition Packet Callback Packet Draft of the Script (This is still being edited. There is much in this version that will not be included in the final.)
Twenty-nine consecutive years performing Shakespeare with mixed Newton North/Newton South casts! South Stage and Newton North's Theatre Ink are proud to claim one of the longest running and most outstanding Shakespeare performance programs for high school students in the United States. Few high school theatre programs prioritize Shakespeare every year; even fewer collaborate with a sister school, mixing casts and crews. Newton has been doing both for more than a quarter century. South Stage initiated the collaboration with Shakespeare & Company and Newton North in the 1982-83 school year. Working with a combined cast from North and South, Kevin Coleman, Education Director of Shakespeare & Company, launched Romeo and Juliet, the first in an unbroken line of Shakespeare collaborations which have challenged students, delighted audiences, generated friendships, brought North and South together in a common enterprise, and fostered interest in theatre across town. As a result, hundreds of Newton students have rehearsed and performed Shakespeare, worked with professional directors, made friends in both Newton high schools, discovered the power that lies in their voice, and explored the depth, power, and muscularity of Shakespeare's text. Literally thousands have witnessed this remarkable process from the audience. As dozens of professional directors have shown us since 1983, "Shakespeare is the Olympics for actors." Shakespeare's text demands a combined physical, emotional, intellectual, and vocal commitment beyond that of modern plays or musicals. It is Shakespeare & Company's specific belief that combining disciplined, sustained voice work with Shakespeare does more than bring Shakespeare alive for students; it aims at bringing students alive to the human possibilities within themselves as they confront Shakespeare's text. As Kevin Coleman writes, "Adolescence is most like the Renaissance. We seldom repeat its intensity and extremity, its excitement and its pain. What better material, what better "script" to put into the hands of adolescents than Shakespeare? The accuracy with which he reveals our thoughts and feelings, our human nature, teaches who and what we are, and consequently what we may become. In the truest sense of the word, he educates." South Stage and Theatre Ink have been producing Shakespeare together for more than a quarter century. We are extremely proud to continue raising the bar with this extraordinary Shakespeare tradition! |