Oregon Shakespeare Festival Selected for Shakespeare for a New Generation

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has been selected to participate in Shakespeare for a New Generation, a major initiative sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with Arts Midwest.

OSF received a $25,000 grant to support 200 performances of four Shakespeare plays, related classroom curricula, and 350 actor workshops, pre-and post-show discussions, classes and teachers' programs for 300 schools (15,000-17,000 student tickets) in California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

While OSF has always had a strong education department with far-reaching educational programming, continuing trends in the field of education have affected student attendance at the theater. This grant will help OSF offer discounted performances to student groups; expand the distribution of theater education materials to teachers; encourage participation by teachers in OSF's professional development programs; reduce program fees for schools; and identify new and increased private support for education.

Fifteen, or two-thirds, of the Festival's education programs focus on students and teachers. These 15 programs reach culturally, economically and geographically diverse schools from across the western United States. Student attendance was 53,477 for the 2005 season, February through October 2005. The touring School Visit Program reached another 70,504 students in four states (CA, OR, WA, KS), bringing the total number of students served by OSF to 123,981 for the year.

The NEA's Shakespeare for a New Generation initiative gives high school and middle school students throughout America the opportunity to experience Shakespeare's works through high-quality productions and educational activities. It is the fourth phase of Shakespeare in American Communities, launched in September 2003, which has already reached more than 500 communities, 18 military bases, and 1,500 schools across all 50 states. This is the largest Shakespeare tour in American history.

"What is most remarkable about our Shakespeare for a New Generation program is that it not only benefits students across the nation by bringing them to live theater, often for the first time, but that the program also helps their teachers by making their English assignments literally come to life from the page to the stage," said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia. "For the theater companies, it gives them the opportunity to become known by a whole new generation."