TAKING THE BARD TO SCHOOL: ‘AN INTIMATE GLIMPSE’
Shakespeare & Co. to premier film on student productions
SLenox, Mass. hakespeare & Company will present the world premiere of the first full-length documentary in the 44-year-ensemble's history during benefit screenings on Nov. 6.
Titled "Speak What We Feel" and made over the course of three years by Berkshires filmmaker, theater artist and educator Patrick J. Toole, the movie chronicles Shakespeare & Company's annual Fall Festival of Shakespeare, in which its stage directors and teachers work with about 500 students from 10 regional schools to stage Shakespeare plays. It is narrated by Shakespeare & Company’s director of education, Kevin G. Coleman, who created the festival. The documentary earned the Audience Award for Best Documentary Film at the 2021 Berkshire International Film Festival, held in September in Great Barrington and Pittsfield
"Speak What We Feel" will be shown at 2 p.m. Saturday, followed by a discussion with Allyn Burrows, Shakespeare & Company's artistic director. Tickets are $10 to $30. The 7 p.m. screening on Saturday, priced at $50, $100 and $250, will include a conversation with Burrows, Toole, others involved in the making of the film and artists who participate in the Fall Festival of Shakespeare. The running time is approximately 85 minutes. Ticket sales and proceeds will be matched up to $10,000 by an anonymous donor to support the Fall Festival of Shakespeare.
Tickets are available online at shakespeare.org. Future online screenings are planned for the documentary but details have not been finalized, according to Shakespeare & Company spokeswoman Jaclyn Stevenson.
Featuring interview with student and adult participants, "Speak What We Feel" offers "offers an intimate glimpse into a collaborative and immersive exploration of Shakespeare," according to promotional material, which quotes Toole as saying, “I can’t think of a more compelling and inspiring documentary subject to cover.
... Anthropologists should be studying this program and the unique community that has emerged from it!”
Held annually for more than three decades, Shakespeare & Company's Fall Festival of Shakespeare puts professional directors into schools in Berkshire and Hampden counties in Massachusetts and New York's Columbia County. They work with students to create short version of 10 Shakespeare plays that, in nonpandemic
years, premiere on the same night at each school and are later performed over four nights on Shakespeare & Company's main stage, the Tina Packer Playhouse.
Boston radio station WBUR said of the Fall Festival of Shakespeare, “This is a rock concert of Shakespeare! Show after show after show, the theater is jammed with kids and adults cheering for the performers and the productions.” The 33-year-old festival has been replicated across the United States as well as in Australia, Bosnia, Canada, India, Israel, South Korea and the United Kingdom, according to Shakespeare & Company.
Because of current public-health considerations, the productions are not being staged in schools this fall, and the Tina Packer Playhouse performances will be open to students and parents but not the public. The performances will be live-streamed for free, with two each on Nov. 18, 19 and 21 and four on Nov. 20. Live-stream details including titles and times will be posted in the coming days at shakespeare.org/shows/2021/the-33rdfall-festival-of-shakespeare. Among the plays scheduled to be performed are "Cymbeline" by Lenox High School, "Hamlet" by Springfield Central High School and "Twelfth Night" by Chatham Middle/high School.
Below, a performance by students at Chatham Middle/high School is captured for the film “Speak What We Feel.”