Great River Shakespeare Festival

Audience engagement: the festival hosted four post-show discussions with the casts and audience members. Audience's wanted to explore directional choices like having hamlet start the famous "to be or not to be" monologue while walking in from the side of the stage rather than standing center full of thought. The director and actor commented that they wanted the audience to feel that they were part of hamlet's continual stream of consciousness. The rapid pace of the speech was also explored. It had been designed to help the audience feel hamlet's frenzy in trying to put the pieces together of what had happened to his family. At one of the talkbacks for much ado about nothing, a discussion revolved around women still fighting for autonomy 400 years after this play was written. Audiences also wanted to know what attracted the two black leads to winona. They commented that grsf "walks the talk" in its dedication to embracing diversity and they praised the opportunity to engage with audiences in this manner. Additional outreach programs included five sunday morning panel discussions at a local coffee house. Each featured a different aspect of theatrical production and varied members of the company. Aired on facebook live, each panel took questions from the live audience as well as online participants. Dedicated performances were set up as "fidget friendly and two performances were translated in american sign language and audio described for the deaf. Each friday afternoon performance was preceded by a free workshop for area teens who then received free tickets to the performance. The weekly emailed newsletter featured happenings at the festival as well as special content like "shakespeare's couple's therapy," a spoof of the television series where members of the company portrayed various shakespeare couples on the couch with a therapist. This spoof is the latest addition to grsf's extensive youtube content.

Education: three courses were offered: will's creative drama (for ages 4 - 2nd grade), will's power players (for 3rd - 6th grade), and shakespeare for young actors. Total enrollment of 55 students was managed through a software program called coursestorm which allowed grsf to gather crucial information about students, communicate easily with parents, and to establish payment plans and scholarship programs for students. All of the classes were taught by professional educators with the assistance of members of the acting company at the festival. Two highlights of the season were the student-created productions of the hamlet dating game based on the game show but featuring characters from hamlet (created and performed by the 3rd - 6th graders) and a 90-minute production of king lear (created and performed by the 7th - 12th graders. Each group, in a short time period, created and memorized significant amounts of dialogue and were able to fully embody emotionally complex characters. Each class concluded in a public performance on the following dates: june 29, july 6, july 13, and july 21. The first three dates, focusing on the younger students, were performed for family and friends. The final date (the 90-minute king lear) was performed for nearly 200 audience members. The majority of the class were students on the neurodivergent spectrum. Seeing them work as an ensemble to tell a complicated family tragedy was inspiring. Knowing that many students have difficulty expressing their feelings, the final lines of the play were especially poignant: "the weight of this sad time we must obey; speak what we feel, not what we ought to say." eleven students received full or partial scholarship support in 2024, the same number as in 2023. Everyone who requested financial assistance received it.