Los Angeles, CA. Previously known as the Los Angeles Drama Club, the Shakespeare Youth Festival is a community of young people from various backgrounds across LA who come together to tell stories, perform plays, and express themselves. SYF focuses on building communication and literacy skills and improving the self-esteem of these children. This summer, the organization planned various events that helped grow these skills further.
From June 21 to June 25, SYF held the Young Playwrights’ Festival through Zoom. The program involved daily sessions where students of Grade 7 and up were given playwriting and storytelling lessons. Students were encouraged to write plays based on prompts, events from their own lives, and stories they made up together, and at the end of the program the plays were performed by professional actors and Los Angeles Drama Club actors.
SYF students in the Shakespeare in Nature program.
The Shakespeare in Nature program was held from from July 12 to July 16 at the Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. Participating students were from Grades 2 through 8 and learned about plays that had heavy nature themes, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear. The program explored three different concepts: how Shakespeare uses plants as plot devices in his plays, the concern surrounding climate change and environmentalism during Shakespeare’s time, and the various allusions Shakespeare makes to birds in his poems and plays.
The organization’s Summer with SYF 2021 program is currently ongoing, with registration still open for interested students. The program holds sessions every Monday through Friday and serves as an introduction in the world of Shakespeare and his plays for the youth. Additional information on registration and financial aid for those who are keen can be found here: https://shakespeareyouthfestival.com/summer-2021/
More about the Shakespeare Youth Festival:
“We are Shakespeare Youth Festival, the country’s youngest Shakespeare Troupe. In the spirit of cultural generosity and with the goal of creative excellence, we create diverse communities of belonging and self-empowerment with children and youth locally and across the globe through the magic of theater … and we do it all in Iambic Pentameter.” SYF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
To learn more about SYF, click here: https://shakespeareyouthfestival.com/
