Shakespeare & Company Will Premiere a New Documentary Film Next Month

Shakespeare & Company will present in-person Benefit screenings of Speak What We Feel, a documentary by Patrick J. Toole about the Company's acclaimed Fall Festival of Shakespeare, Saturday, November 6, 2021, at 2:00PM EDT and at 7:00PM EDT in the Tina Packer Playhouse.

Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary Film at the 2021 Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF) and the first feature-length film project in the Company's 44-year history, Speak What We Feel follows hundreds of students from 10 high schools across Berkshire, Hampden, and Columbia counties as they prepare to stage a full production of a Shakespeare play under the guidance of Shakespeare & Company education artists.

Featuring interviews with student participants, as well as Fall Festival Directors, and other Shakespeare & Company representatives, Speak What We Feel offers an intimate glimpse into a collaborative and immersive exploration of Shakespeare that has been a local mainstay of arts education for more than three decades. The Fall Festival of Shakespeare has also been replicated across the United States as well as in Australia, Bosnia, Canada, India, Israel, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.

"I can't think of a more compelling and inspiring documentary subject to cover than the Fall Festival of Shakespeare," said Speak What We Feel director Patrick J. Toole. "Anthropologists should be studying this program and the unique community that has emerged from it!"

"You should really be there," adds Founding Shakespeare & Company Director of Education Kevin G. Coleman. "But, if you can't be in the rehearsal, on the stage, or in the audience, this film will take you there."

Tickets: Pay What You Choose tickets to the 2:00PM community screening are $10, $20, and $30. Tickets to the 7:00PM Benefit Screening are $50, $100, and $250. All ticket proceeds and donations from these special screenings will be matched up to $10,000 by an anonymous family in support of this year's Fall Festival of Shakespeare, which marks a return to live student performing in the Tina Packer Playhouse following the virtual Senior Fall Festival in 2020. Visit shakespeare.org to learn more and purchase tickets to either Speak What We Feel screening.

Both screenings will be followed by a talkback facilitated by Shakespeare & Company Artistic Director Allyn Burrows. The 7:00PM benefit will also provide an opportunity to meet the filmmakers and other artists involved in the Fall Festival of Shakespeare.

These special screenings are dedicated to the memory of beloved Shakespeare & Company supporter and dear friend, Elayne P. Bernstein, and her love and passion of our Education programs, on the 10-year anniversary of her passing. Her devotion to the youth within our community, and to the Fall Festival of Shakespeare, inspired the lives of thousands of students and continues to inspire us to this day.

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