!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> Streamline Training & Documentation: Shakespeare & Company

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Shakespeare & Company

Saturday evening I set off from Northampton to see the press opening of Shakespeare & Company's new production of Hamlet. I hadn't yet had a look at the company's new 30-acre campus in Lenox, to which they moved from Edith Warton's mansion, The Mount, in 2000.

The grounds are a relaxing expanse of lawns and gardens with a number of buildings of different vintages. The main building is Founders' Theatre, which houses a flexible performance space, rehearsal space, and a lobby with bar and gift counter.

The company is now in its 29th season, which is a tribute to the entrepreneurial energy and skill of artistic director, Tina Packer, and her dedicated associates.

Aside from the quality of the performances the company stages — Hamlet was excellent — their dedication to learning is exemplary. The company has programs for training stage professionals and for education relating to Shakespeare and his times.

In S&Co's words, the aim of the professional training programs is:
... deepening of the actor’s connection to language, to releasing the natural voice, to freeing the body from habitual patterning and stimulating the imagination, to finding illumination in the relationship of the actor with the audience.
There is a three-weekend series of workshops, a summer training institute, a clown workshop, weeklong and monthlong intensive Shakespeare programs, and a workshop on speaking Shakespeare persuasively, a skill whose value Tina Packer particularly emphasizes.

The education program provides opportunities for teachers and students to deepen their knowledge and appreciation of Shakespeare's work and, by extension, their knowledge and appreciation of literature and of the English language. There are residencies in schools, touring productions of Shakespeare, a Macbeth CD/DVD, student matinees, youth programs, teachers programs, resources for teachers, and a fall Shakespeare Festival.

The Shakespeare Festival, for students in western Massachusetts and nearby areas of New York State, is:
... a nine-week, language-based exploration of a Shakespeare play culminating in a full-scale production. Each project includes a series of inter-scholastic master classes in stage combat, Elizabethan dance, text in performance, stage management, and technical theatre. At the end of the residency, students perform their plays at their schools, and then gather, in a spirit of celebration, to perform their plays for one another and the public in a four-day festival on Shakespeare & Company's Mainstage.
As a final note, I'd mention that Tina Packer, in the time-honored fashion of artists who undertake various outside projects to supplement their income, has published Power Plays: Shakespeare's Lessons in Leadership and Management, a book co-written with John Whitney, a professor at Columbia Business School. This is not a book I've read, and, based on feedback at Amazon, it won't ever make it to the top of the pile by my bed. Its interest for me lies in the additional evidence it offers of what a productive person based in the non-profit sector can do to make her lifework financially feasible.

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