A Message from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

team_r1_c1Professor Stanley Wells CBE

Honorary President of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and one of the world’s leading experts on Shakesperian studies

team_r3_c1Peter Kyle OBE, Chairman

team_r5_c2Dr Diana Owen, Director

team_r7_c2Rev. Dr Paul Edmondson, Head of Research and Knowledge

team_r9_c2Dr Nick Walton, Shakespeare Courses Development Manager

As Honorary President, Chairman, Director, and Head of Research and Knowledge, and Shakespeare Courses Development Manager for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, it gives us great pleasure to introduce our affiliated organization, American Friends of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Inc. (“American Friends”).

The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust was founded as an educational charity in 1847 to promote and care for Shakespeare’s legacy. Today we welcome over 700,000 visitors every year to the houses connected with Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, maintain one of the world’s largest Shakesperian libraries and archives, and offer an exciting range of learning programmes for all ages and levels of interest. We have extensive experience of hosting summer schools and special courses for students from the United States.

We have authorized American Friends to present our educational programmes to American high schools in the United States. Our current goal is to familiarize American high school administrators and teachers with the opportunities for young people to travel to Stratford and to study Shakespeare’s works in an authentic setting featuring world renowned experts, immersing students in interactive activities, and introducing them to the actual sites where Shakespeare and his family lived.

Knowing how important it is for high school students to learn through experience as well as to initiate research with access to important archives and historical documents, our education staff at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is looking forward to welcoming American high school students to Stratford-upon-Avon.

The Trust’s Education Department is expert in designing programmes to suit students’ and faculty’s needs to meet specific curriculum objectives. We have many programmes of study that you may find to be an exact fit or you may wish to design a programme based on specific goals of preferred depth or length. We can tailor the curriculum if the visiting school group has particular interests; we have done this for various international schools in Europe and Asia who annually bring students over to England for a similar experience with the work, life and times of Shakespeare.

As the sample programme below indicates, our programme offers dramatic workshops to help students stage scenes from one play, attending one or more performances at the Royal Shakespeare Company, meetings with Royal Shakespeare Company staff and actors, lectures and discussions on Shakespeare’s plays and Elizabethan culture and history, visits to our extensive archives and special collections, and visits to the Shakespeare-related properties (birthplace, grave and others), as well as a possible excursion from Stratford (Warwick Castle or Oxford, for example).

The student groups would stay in local Bed-and-Breakfast establishments, “Guesthouses”, with whom we have long-standing relationships that are convenient for walking to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (where most of the program activities would take place), the properties and the theater.

We welcome the opportunity to design interpretive and interactive programmes for American high school students.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Macbeth