Shakespeare & Young Company Stages MARINA AND LOVE DANCE Tonight

Shakespeare & Young Company brings merriment, madness, tragedy and passion to the outdoor Rose Footprint Theatre with two original performances -- Marina and Love Dance -- short vignettes compiled from scenes of Shakespeare's work. The performers are acting students aged 16-20 who come from schools across the United States including, The Drama Studio in Springfield, The Pioneer Valley Performing Arts High School in South Hadley, Bard College, Sarah Lawrence College, Arkansas State University and Bard College at Simons Rock. Shows are tonight, August 13 and Friday, August 15, both at 5:00 pm.

Come celebrate the work of Shakespeare & Company's young artists. Tickets are $15 for adults and free for students. Please call the Box Office at (413) 637-3353 or visit the Shakespeare & Company website at shakespeare.org for tickets and additional information.

"Marina is drawn from Pericles, and follows the story line of Marina, Prince Pericles' daughter. Love Dance is a piece drawn from various texts about love, and will include music and movement," says Co-Director and Education Artist Tom Jaeger. "Some of the sources for Love Dance include Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Othello, Two Noble Kinsmen, the sonnets, Venus and Adonis, and Romeo and Juliet, as well as smaller pieces from several other sources."

The Shakespeare & Young Company summer program is taught and co-directed by Education Artist Tom Jaegar and Sarah Jeanette Taylor. In its 24th year, the Young Company program is known to be serious training for students, offering high school and college aged students the chance to explore scene work in-depth. The nine performers in this session include Madison Couture, Rachel Frank, Rachel Hall, Rhett Haver, Madeleine Morrell, Grace Rossman, Gabe Strasburger, Ali Weinstein and Olivia Wolfe.

"The reasons we use cuts and constructs such as these are several. It allows us to expose participants to a wider range of Shakespeare's texts and, more importantly, it allows us to craft pieces that present specific challenges to specific participants, while at the same time assuring each of the students ample opportunity to shine," says Jaeger. "It would be terribly anti-climactic, and unfair, after 8 weeks of study and rehearsal, to play Lady Montague, who has two lines and dies off stage... We have a wonderful group of nine participants this summer and it's a pleasure and a privilege to watch them begin to discover themselves as actors."

About Shakespeare & Young Company Director Tom Jaeger - Tom is in his 10th season at S&Co., recent credits include: Director of Shakespeare & Young Company 2011, 2012, 2013, The Comedy of Errors (Duke Solinus), Berkeley Square (Mr. Throstle), Twelfth Night Tour/Stables Theatre (Malvolio/ Sebastian), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Snug), Hamlet Tour/Stables (Hamlet), Troilus and Cressida(Hector/Ulysses/ Patroclus), Souls Belated (Gannett), Romeo and Juliet (Peter), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Snout/Tank the Dog). In addition to his three years as Co-Director/Faculty of Shakespeare & Young Company, Tom has directed 18 productions for the Spring and Fall Festivals of Shakespeare.

About Shakespeare & Young Company Director Sarah Jeanette Taylor - Sarah is in her 9th season at S&Co., recent credits include: It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, The Tamer Tamed, The Tempest, A View Beyond, Love's Labor's Lost,Shakespeare and the Language that Shaped a World, DibbleDance, S&Co. Spring Tours: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet. Regional: Clara(Ventfort Hall); Cymbeline, Trolius and Cressida (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre);Macbeth, Twelfth Night (Back Room Shakespeare Project); Macbeth (Worcester Foothills Theatre). BFA in Acting University of Central Florida, MFA in Acting Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University.

About Shakespeare & Young Company - Shakespeare & Young Company, founded in 1991, is a two-month training program for high shool and college students where participants gain extensive exposure to the acting techniques practiced at S&Co.: voice, text, movement, stage combat, clown and structure of the verse. After spending the summer working with Company teachers, directors and actors, Shakespeare & Young Company shares its work on stage with two public performances. Many past participants have continued to train with the Company, performing in Mainstage productions and participating in the Summer Training Instituteand the Fall Festival of Shakespeare.

About the Education Program - Guided by Director of Education Kevin G. Coleman and Associate Director of Education Jenna Ware, the Company's award-winning Education Program is one of the most extensive theatre-in-education programs in the Northeast. The Education Program, since its inception in 1978, has reached over a million students with innovative performances, workshops and residencies including The Northeast Regional Tour of Shakespeare, the Fall Festival of Shakespeare, Shakespeare & Young Company, Riotous Youth, Shakespeare in the Courts (with the Berkshire Juvenile Court),Shakespeare in our Schools: Workshops for Teachers and Actors, and the National Institute on Teaching Shakespeare, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. For the eleventh consecutive year, the Northeast Regional Tour was generously supported by a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts through Arts Midwest's, Shakespeare in American Communities initiative, administrated by NEA's national program.

The Education program received the Commonwealth Award, the highest award for excellence in the arts, sciences and humanities given by the state of Massachusetts, and was also the subject of the two-year study by Harvard University's Graduate School of Education (Project Zero), which recommended national replication. Most recently recognized by a 2013 Massachusetts House of Representatives Resolution, the Education program has been identified by the Arts Education Partnership and the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities as a Champion of Change. The Education Program is supported in part by grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council and its Youth Reach Initiative, the Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn Foundation, Deborah and Bill Ryan, Jeffrey Konowitch and Wendy Laurin, Berkshire Life Insurance Co., A Guardian Corporation, The Feigenbaum Foundation, The Charles Hall Foundation, The Red Lion Inn, Country Curtains, Berkshire Bank, the Cultural Councils of Great Barrington, Lee, Lenox, Monterey, New Marlboro, North Andover, Pittsfield, Sheffield, Springfield, Stockbridge and Richmond, and a coalition of businesses, families and individuals.

About Shakespeare & Company - Located in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, Shakespeare & Company is one of the largest Shakespeare Festivals in the country. Founded in 1978 by Tina Packer, the organization attracts more than 60,000 patrons annually, with a core of over 150 artists and more than 30 full-time staff. The Company develops and performs Shakespeare, classics, contemporary, and new plays of social and political significance, generating opportunities for collaboration between actors, directors and designers of all races, nationalities and backgrounds. Shakespeare & Company embraces the core values of Shakespeare's work: collaboration, commitment to language, visceral experience and classical ideals, expressed with physical prowess and an embodied contemporary voice.

The Company offers one of the most extensive actor training programs by a regional theatre in the country, where professionals from all over the world come to train with the organization known for its original, in-depth, classical training and performance methods. Shakespeare & Company is also home to an award-winning and nationally recognized theatre-in-education program, one of the largest the Northeast; it reaches more than 45,000 students annually with innovative performances, workshops and residencies. For more information, visit shakespeare.org.

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