WAITING FOR THE DREAM  
Director Irina Brook’s Waiting for the Dream is a visually imaginative, thoroughly alluring, extremely playful take on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The recent favorite of the Parisian stage and the European festival scene, it will tour America in 2009. The Independent of London called it “an infectiously joyous production…with a charming, knockabout spirit, it creates a sense of family.” The Voice of a City Paris said it is “exhilarating and emotional…one the best performances I’ve seen for the last two years.”

In a simple, believable turn of events, at curtain time the audience learns that the actors’ flight has been cancelled. The cast cannot make it in time, and there will be no show. But wait a minute! Just when all seems lost, seven roughhouse stage technicians decide to put on the show to spare the audience disappointment. Shakespeare’s funniest and most transformative play begins, as if his own rude mechanicals have been set loose on his words, taking the famous enchantment from the level of giddy farce to the heights of heart stopping wonder.

Wating for the Dream  begins in an insouciant, catch-as-catch-can spirit, immediately catching the audience off guard, and goes on to present Shakespeare’s most transformative comedy in a most delicate and meaningful manner. With audiences in tow, something magical happens. The seemingly spontaneous, seat-of-the-pants show fills with poetry, comedy, human character, coming straight from the history of itinerant troupes who acted in the moment, providing incomparable delight to audiences of all ages, backgrounds and expertise at Shakespeare.

It’s a sparkling 90 minutes, with minimum costumes and props, but with huge moments of fun and improvisation at every turn. Waiting for the Dream brings the best of Shakespeare’s classic to the fore for modern audiences, staying faithful to all the love, humor, rudeness, passion and desire that have made it the most joyful and enjoyed play of all time.

HAMLET
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Eleanor Holdridge
Featuring:
Jason Asprey - Hamlet
Dennis Krausnick - Polonius
Tina Packer - Queen Gertrude
Elizabeth Raetz – Ophelia
A dead king is all too quickly succeeded by his brother, who then hastily marries his widowed sister-in-law. Hamlet suspects treachery, and when his father’s ghost appears and tells him he was murdered, Hamlet promises violent revenge. So begins his struggle between moral integrity and the need for vengeance in a corrupt world. 

Shakespeare & Company's cast members, led by Master Teachers Tina Packer and Dennis Krausnick, have developed and refined the Company’s training over the nearly three decades of the organization's existence. These artist-teachers, some of whom began their professional lives at Shakespeare & Company, also continue their work in universities, theatre conservatories, and professional training organizations around the world. Shakespeare & Company's curriculum is internationally recognized as a deeply effective training experience for actors who aspire to bring their talent, intuition, and spirit to a higher level.

TALK BACK
Shakespeare’s themes and messages are as true to day as they were 400 years ago. Shakespeare & Company actors will be available to meet post-performance or at a time to be scheduled with the Presenter to discuss themes, topics and truths relevant to Hamlet and to today’s society. Actors will be prepared to discuss the rehearsal process and methods and to answer participant / audience questions regarding Shakespeare’s work. Talk-backs are typically 60-90 minutes in length and can accommodate any number of participants.

WOMEN OF WILL: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare’s Plays 
(parts 1, 2 & 3)
Tina Packer and a fellow artist-teacher trace the progression of Shakespeare’s artistic evolution by examining his relationship to the women he writes about. From the virgins and man-eating women of his early plays, to the women who disguise themselves as men or stay in their frocks and die to tell the truth, to the daughters who redeem their fathers in his late plays – Packer mixes scholarship, discussion and performance to present riveting theatre. Presenter should expect the program, available for the full auditorium-sized audience, to be between 90 minutes and 2 hours (plus intermission).

INTRODUCTORY WORKSHOP
The will power and commitment necessary to speak Shakespeare text in a way that fully involves the audience demands that the actor draw upon inner reserves they may never have touched before. Participants in the Workshop are introduced to Shakespeare & Company's training methods, and an opportunity to re-awaken and revitalize their relationship to Shakespeare's text. The Workshop provides an introduction to Shakespeare & Company's aesthetic and an opportunity for the actors to shift gears and focus on their work through a series of exercises involving voice, body and memory work; focuses on the actor's individual voice and experiences, which are incorporated into a monologue that the actor has prepared for the class; and moves more vigorously through the voice and body work, with the actors reconnecting with Shakespeare's text, revisiting their monologues and exploring how the structure of the verse might influence character and performance. These Workshops are limited to 15 people per artist-teacher and can be scheduled for 5 to 20 hours.

CLOWN!
The little guy with the little red nose...and the BIG spirit. Clown training frees the Actor to plumb the depths of creativity and self-expression, from small, safe, clichéd choices, reminding the Actor that the Actors job is to PLAY! To Play with all its heart, with all its might, for all it’s worth. It is the Truth...about our humanity...and about why we go to the theatre. In Clown!, we begin with the body, with games; we dance and we play: outrageously, profoundly. We play with the certainty of the delighted child, in spite of the certainty of Failure—and ridicule. We explore the dynamic between Stillness and Movement; between Actor and Audience; between Self and Other; between Failure and Defeat. We play with Entrances and Exits, the Trick, the Flop, Duets and Trio’s, Status, and the Rhythm and Timing of comedy. Clown! is physically demanding, largely non-verbal, and improvisational and is not recommended for the infirm of body, mind, or spirit. Clown! can be scheduled for 30-60 hours across multiple days.

FIRST FOLIO WORKSHOP
The First Folio Workshop will examine the printing of the First Folio, bringing an oral culture onto the printed page. It will examine the impact of the printing press on the actor's art, the evolution of the English language during the 16th century, Shakespeare's growth as an artist from the early texts through his final masterpieces, Shakespeare's use of verse to enhance the psychological/emotional state of the speaker, and Shakespeare's use of spelling and punctuation to unlock the written text for the actor. The First Folio Workshop will involve voice classes geared to getting the "text experience" into the whole body, aligning the breath with the structure of the verse to clarify the rhetorical meaning of the text. Participants will need to prepare two speeches of about twenty to thirty lines each, one each from Antony & Cleopatra and Titus Andronicus. The First Folio can be scheduled for 15 to 24 hours across several days.

RHETORIC WORKSHOP
Shakespeare wrote in Rhetorical forms for an audience well accustomed to hearing them. When speaking Shakespeare’s text, we 21st Century Westerners begin with the disadvantage of being steeped in a highly visual society. Speaking Shakespeare’s text persuasively demands deep internal recognition of the way he wrote, and how it was intended to persuade. The Rhetoric Workshop is a hands-on acting workshop encompassing voice work, movement and text classes which focus on speeches and exchanges that highlight elements of structure and rhetoric. It is experiential work and offers immersion in the following areas vital to playing Shakespeare: · The Music and Architecture of Shakespeare's Verse as a tool for accessing the psychological and emotional state of the character · Classical Logic and Rhetorical Figures to unlock the power of Shakespeare's argument · Embodying the Text through Voice and Movement work designed to let the text live in the whole body The focus of this workshop is to embody the elements of rhetoric and argument as Shakespeare knew them; examine the evolving styles of verse structure from Shakespeare's early, middle and late plays; and apply this knowledge to a practical speaking of the text. Participants would prepare two short monologues from two selected plays. The Rhetoric Workshop will be scheduled by the Presenter across 5 or more days, for a total of 30-60 hours.

FIGHT & TEXT
Instinct. Will. Survival. Stage fighting is not just choreography, it is an expression of the deepest and most basic, raw drives in all of human experience: the desire to survive, to thrive, to win at all cost. The moment when we find out who lives and who dies, who is free and who enslaved, who thrives and who must perish. These moments require more than mere choreography to express! Shakespeare & Company’s artist-teachers have developed ways of representing these events through choreography and techniques which keep us physically safe while conveying the illusion of danger – these are the big acting moments in which a fighter must summon the deepest of all human truths. While actors must at all times be kept safe, they must also commit to the authenticity of the circumstance. Fight & Text is an acting workshop, which includes stage combat sessions (hand to hand and swordplay) and in-depth scene work, focusing on authenticity and true personal connection to the events and the text. This breakthrough program combines the essentials of fight with the emotional and textual clarity Shakespeare & Company is famous for. Find the authentic instinct and will to survive! Presenters should schedule 20 hours across multiple days for Fight & Text.