In Shake It Up!, Hamptons Shakespeare Festival artist-educators work with students and classroom teachers to explore Shakespeare’s poetry and prose through acting, music, visual arts, and other disciplines. Activities foster reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, creativity, and cooperation. Classroom visits feature performances by professional actors. Students make connections between Shakespeare, the arts, and other academic subjects.
The Festival offers a variety of workshops and residencies tailored to each class’ curriculum, time constraints, and grade level (3rd - 12th). We collaborate closely with classroom teachers, school administrators, arts coordinators, and parents. Shake It Up! activities are created with New York State Learning Standards in mind and assist schools in meeting curriculum requirements. Past residencies have included:
- An eight-visit, elementary-school residency exploring themes in several of Shakespeare’s plays.
- A four-visit, junior-high-school residency investigating the world of Julius Caesar, culminating in a class trip to see a performance of the play.
- One-day, high-school workshops focusing on bringing to life the texts of Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet.
Shake It Up! residencies can be combined with the Festival’s Theater for Young Audiences touring productions to add a professional performance to the students’ experience.
Please contact us for more information.