CPS and CST Team Up for ROMEO AND JULIET, 10/29-30

In their fifth annual CPS Shakespeare! collaboration, Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) artists and an ensemble of 30 students and teachers from ten Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are breaking down language barriers and promoting critical literacy with an adaptation of William Shakespeare's iconic Romeo and Juliet. CPS Shakespeare! brings together a diverse group of students from CPS high schools across Chicago in a collaborative process that provides training with a team of theater professionals, including text coaches and a fight choreographer. The script, adapted by Director Kirsten Kelly, includes portions of verse in Spanish to represent the diversity of the ensemble and Chicago community. CPS Shakespeare! Romeo and Juliet is performed on the same set designed for CST's current full-length production of Romeo and Juliet in the Courtyard Theater.

Chicago Shakespeare Theater's CPS Shakespeare! Romeo and Juliet runs Friday, October 29 at 4:30 p.m. and Saturday, October 30 at 11 a.m. in CST's Courtyard Theater. Each performance is followed by a 30-minute post-show discussion with the entire ensemble. Tickets are $5 and may be purchased by calling Chicago Shakespeare Theater's Box Office at 312.595.5600 or visiting www.chicagoshakes.com.

CPS Shakespeare! is a central component of CST's Team Shakespeare arts-in-education program, which has served over 1 million students and teachers since its inception in 1991. Many of the participating educators in CPS Shakespeare! have graduated from another component of Team Shakespeare programming: Bard Core Curriculum: Reading into Shakespeare. This year-long professional development seminar mentors English teachers from some of the most at-risk Chicago public schools, exploring how the skills of theater practitioners link directly to best practices in literacy. Bard Core also offers practical reading strategies through which CPS students may engage a Shakespeare play-and ultimately celebrate a newfound understanding of language.

"As schools across the country question whether Shakespeare is too challenging to remain in the curriculum, our work with CPS teachers and students is increasingly critical," says CST Director of Education and Communications Marilyn Halperin. "In a literate society, language gives us power. For the students who participate in CPS Shakespeare!, taking on Shakespeare's language as their own through the rehearsal process and performance is an act of real empowerment."

For CPS Shakespeare! ensemble member Maria Rivera, a teacher at Gage Park High School and former Bard Core participant, the power of Shakespeare's language is apparent. Rivera used the strategies she learned in Bard Core to create a Shakespeare curriculum for her ESL students last year and was astounded by the results.

"My students opened up 200 percent," Rivera says. "Everybody bought in. No one was disengaged and attendance was through the roof every day. Students were even excited to do vocabulary! They found a natural bridge between the language of Shakespeare and Spanish. As soon as kids can tap into the language, they feel brilliant and it means something. They feel a part of something bigger, and they feel connected to you for giving them that access."

After working with her ESL students on Romeo and Juliet in her classroom last year, Rivera is excited to bring several of them on board for CPS Shakespeare! Romeo and Juliet.
A total of ten high schools from across the Chicago Public School system, represented by 22 students and eight teachers, will collaborate on this year's production: Alcott High School for the Humanities, Curie Metropolitan High School, Gage Park High School, Hancock College Preparatory High School, Kenwood Academy High School, Multicultural Arts High School, Phillips Academy High School, Prosser Career Academy, Steinmetz Academic Centre and Taft High School.

Director and Adaptor Kirsten Kelly, who helped to develop the CPS Shakespeare! program with CST Director of Education and Communications Marilyn Halperin, returns to CST for her fifth year. An award-winning documentary film and theater director, Kelly has directed past CPS Shakespeare! productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. She recently directed Daniel Talbott's Slipping at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and The S(He) Experiment, an ensemble-created piece with Roots & Branches Theater Company, a multi-generational theatre company in New York. Other credits include: the Midwest premiere of David Mamet's Boston Marriage, for which she won an After Dark Award for Best Director; Rebecca Gillman's Boy Meets Girl for Theatre Alliance, for which she was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for Best Direction; and Sam Shepard's Savage Love/Tongues with the Julliard Percussion Ensemble at Lincoln Center. Kirsten is currently adapting the Newbery-Award winning young adult novel The Wednesday Wars for the stage and will be directing a workshop of the project in January 2011. She is also directing a new feature documentary on teen homelessness to be released in 2012. Joining Kelly as assistant director is Sandra Shimon, a Prosser Career Academy teacher who has participated in the program for the past three years. The creative team for CPS Shakespeare! Romeo and Juliet includes Choreographer Katie Spelman, Costume Designer Izumi Inaba, Lighting Designer Joel Mortiz, Sound Designer James Savage, Wig and Makeup Designer Melissa Veal, Properties Master Chelsea Meyers and Fight Choreographer David Chrzanowski. Former CPS Shakespeare! participant Samuel Vega will contribute to the creative team as DJ mix designer. Currently an inaugural Pritzker Journalism Fellow at WBEZ, Vega took part in the CPS Shakespeare! program when he was a Clemente High School student in 2007 and 2008.

Ensuring the future of CPS Shakespeare!, Eric's Tazmanian Angel Fund has made a generous commitment to support Chicago Shakespeare's arts-in-education program. This fund will also provide for the Eric Curtis Skowronski Spirit Award, which provides a monetary gift to the school of each participating teacher for their support of the arts, literature or library programs.
CPS Shakespeare! Romeo and Juliet runs Friday, October 29 at 4:30 p.m. and Saturday, October 30 at 11 a.m. in CST's Courtyard Theater. Each performance is followed by a 30-minute post-show discussion with the entire ensemble. Tickets are $5 and may be purchased by calling Chicago Shakespeare Theater's Box Office at 312.595.5600 or visiting www.chicagoshakes.com.

Since its establishment in 1991, Team Shakespeare has served more than 1 million students and teachers-making Chicago Shakespeare Theater one of the nation's largest providers of performing arts-in-education theater programming. As part of CST's commitment to Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the Theater has developed two successful programs targeting at-risk youth: Bard Core and CPS Shakespeare! Bard Core, a professional development seminar offered annually to CPS teachers, explores how the skills of theater practitioners link directly to best practices in literacy, offering practical reading strategies and exercises for CPS students. A number of Bard Core teachers go on to participate in CPS Shakespeare!, which brings together a citywide cast of CPS high school teachers and students to stage an adapted Shakespeare production in CST's Courtyard Theater each fall. Throughout the year, free weekend workshops are offered to teachers looking to innovate their lesson plans, with an upcoming Chicago Shakespeare production used as a central touchstone. Additionally, CST reserves more than 100 professional Shakespeare matinees for student audiences-and the Theater's annual Short Shakespeare! production, an abridgment of a Shakespeare classic, conducts a five-week tour each spring to public, private, parochial, urban and rural schools throughout the Midwest. Reaching nearly 50,000 students annually, Team Shakespeare is part of CST's commitment to lifelong learning, introducing Shakespeare's legacy to a new generation of theatergoers.

Recipient of the 2008 Regional Theatre Tony Award, Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) offers a broad spectrum of theatrical experiences year-round, engaging and entertaining audiences from all walks of life and from around the world. Since moving to its state-of-the-art facility on Navy Pier in 1999, CST has garnered great acclaim under the leadership of Artistic Director Barbara Gaines and Executive Director Criss Henderson, including three Laurence Olivier Awards and more than 30 Joseph Jefferson Awards. Next season, Chicago Shakespeare will celebrate its 25th anniversary.
The 38-play canon of William Shakespeare forms the core of CST's work and Subscription Series, complemented by other dramatic works-from traditional classical theater to new classics that resonate with Shakespeare's timeless insights into the human condition. Through a 48-week season encompassing more than 600 performances, Chicago Shakespeare leads the community as the largest employer of Chicago actors. CST also contributes to an international community of creative exchange through its World's Stage Series, which affords Chicago audiences prime opportunities to experience the cultural and artistic traditions of some of the world's iconic theater troupes as well as sending some of CST's best works abroad. Chicago Shakespeare is committed to making theater an expansive, ever-changing and lifelong relationship. For our family audiences, CST Family presents abridged Shakespeare productions, timeless fables and fairy tales, interactive music concerts and world-premiere musical theater created with families in mind. Our education outreach program, Team Shakespeare, has served over 1 million students and teachers throughout the Midwest, introducing the Bard's legacy to a new generation of theatergoers.