The Academy for Technology and the Classics, Capital High School, Desert Academy, Eldorado Community School, Mandela School, McCurdy School, Monte del Sol Charter School,  New Mexico School for the Arts, Santa Fe High School, Santa Fe Prep, and Santa Fe Indian School have all participated in our programming and sent students to the Festival. 

If you are interested in taking part next year, let us know!

Here's how the program works: The Upstart Crows will make a presentation of the program to your students and/or faculty. After that, interested students sign up and determine a meeting time. Staff are able to meet with students both during school hours or after school. The Crows will provide staff and visiting artists to help students prepare short scenes from Shakespeare and get them performance-ready. Rehearsals are one day a week after school at your high school, led by Upstart Crows and International Shakespeare Center staff.

Students will produce short scenes in a festival performance, and in the process will develop skills in critical thinking, close reading, literary analysis, public speaking, dance, voice, stage combat, and Shakespearean staging. Students will also take part in a workshop with the Festival's visiting artist. In 2016 that was Devon Glover, and students worked with him to create their own sonnets which are being published by the ISC Press.

Details

• All Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Pojoaque, and Espanola high schools are welcome.

• Each school will delegate three to ten students who will rehearse ten fifteen-minute Shakespeare scenes and/or monologues.

• Rehearsals are supervised by ISC staff—there is no burden on teachers.

• Rehearsals are after school, one afternoon a week, for each of the five schools.

• The rehearsal period includes instruction in text and performance from ISC leaders and visiting artists.

• Rehearsals begin in September, with performances during the Thanksgiving/Christmas period (in 2022 we will perform in March).

• Students can choose to work together to create a scene or perform a monologue or soliloquy on their own. As high school seniors interested in college performing arts programs need to prepare classical audition pieces, this training is an additional benefit to participating students.