Bringing the Bard to the Baxter
THE Shakespeare Schools Festival (SSF) is set to start at the Baxter Theatre on May 7 following a successful festival at Artscape Arena Theatre last week.
The event at the Artscape saw nightly sold-out performances by enthusiastic pupils from several Western Cape high schools and excellent responses from audiences.
Running over six days, the SSF is an educational programme aimed at improving language and social skills through the Performing Arts.
It is Educape’s flagship initiative launched in 2010 by Kseniya Filinova-Bruton with the objective of strengthening the link between the arts and education. Since its inception, the SSF SA has grown from an event that attracted 20 pupils, to drawing approximately 2 000 youth across the Western Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.
Organisers say that staging a Shakespearean play in a professional theatre is a challenge to be relished.
They added that the SSF SA is an ideal way for young people seeking to explore their potential in a fun, developmental way to simultaneously make their theatre debut on a professional stage in a non-competitive environment.
The SSF SA is fully interactive and provides guidance and the resources through scripts, training, framework and feedback that equip pupils and educators to successfully direct and perform Shakespearean plays from the first line to the final bow. Schools prepare and perform 30-minute abridged versions of certain plays. Those taking part this year were from Western Cape schools ranging from the metropolis to as far afield as Hermanus.
Event organisers say the exciting news was that the De La Bat School for the Deaf made their stage debut at Artscape with their version of Romeo and Juliet in South African sign language.
The outreach programme has now extended into new communities in Mitchells Plain and Manenberg where, for the first time, the Pioneer School for the blind and visually impaired will participate – an incredible feat.
This is the eighth time that Artscape has hosted the SSF SA and the third year that the event has been held at the Baxter Theatre. After Cape Town, the festival will be staged in George, Grahamstown, Joburg, Durban and Bloemfontein.
Performances, open to the public, are from May 7 to 12 at 7pm at the Baxter Theatre, with booking through Computicket and Webtickets respectively. For more info, e-mail info@ educape.co.za