Shakespeare may have died long ago, but his writing will come alive for select students on April 2.
“Well, we rented OAT [Ozark Actor’s Theatre]. OAT only holds 200 students at a time, so we have them divided by English classes to travel over to OAT and three different times during the day. So there will be three different performances that day. About 600 students will be travelling over to see the performance,” librarian Jessie Shields said.
With the student population being over 1000, not all students will get to see the performance.
“We based [the selected attendance] on English II, English II Honors, English III, Pre-AP [English], AP [English] and Drama. That’s where we pulled our numbers. Like Reading to Achieve, a lot of those people are dual enrolled in an English course,” Shields said.
The performance being put on at OAT is from a troupe from the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival which travels around to schools giving performances such as the one happening on April 2.
“Last year we received a flier that [the troupe] sent out, probably to all of the schools, and we were interested but we had a hard time contacted with them. For some reason, this year it kind of really worked out,” Shields said. “It didn’t work out with a couple of authors for me this year. I had written a grant to get someone [to visit the school]. Elizabeth Scott was the first one and she cancelled on us. Then Jennifer Brown cancelled, rescheduled, cancelled again. So this seemed like another route to go in with the grant money. So we tried and we finally got in contact with them this year and it seems like something that will be beneficial to the students that have some sort of Shakespeare at some point while they’re here at the high school.”
The performance that the selected students will see is approximately 50 minutes long. The troupe will be performing “All the World’s a Stage” which is a mash up of several different performances of the comedic genre.
What students can expect out of this experience is to laugh and to have a unique experience that will be memorable.
“Well, if [the students] have had some Shakespeare, by this point in the year I hope that they have, I hope that they recognize some things and it’s supposed to be pretty funny, so I hope they laugh and have a good time with it too,” Shields said. “Something different and an experience that kids wouldn’t be able to have in high school, or even later they wouldn’t be able to experience something in that type of setting, so I think that would be fun and maybe open doors for them to do that again in the future and maybe even go see something here at OAT. It might open their eyes for something new.”
