UALR’s Department of English and Department of Theatre Arts and Dance is presenting the 2013 Shakespeare Scene Festival today from 9:30 a.m. to noon, in the University Theatre of the Center for Performing Arts.  The event started yesterday.

The Shakespeare Scene Festival, first held in 1998, brings together students from a variety of Central Arkansas schools to perform scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. A performance of a Shakespearean scene integrates several elements of literacy and literacy education including: intensive study of the English language, cooperative learning, process-based theatre as well as the discipline, creativity, and organization required to rehearse and perform a scene.

“The Shakespeare Scene Festival provides an exciting opportunity for middle and high school students in central Arkansas to come together with the UALR community in celebration of the works of Shakespeare,” says Dr. Kris McAbee, the festival’s director. “The student performers are rewarded for their hard work of grappling with these difficult and profound texts by getting to perform them in University Theatre in front of a large audience of their peers and community members. The festival also reminds us of the universality and timelessness of Shakespeare’s works. They are able to speak to the feelings, experiences, and concerns of Arkansas teenagers some 400 years after they were written.”

Classes from five different area schools are participating in the festival. Over 500 students are expected to attend and participate in 11 different performances. The works presented will include scenes from Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Taming of the Shrew, and Richard III, as well as creative adaptations like The Suessification of Romeo and Juliet.  Among the schools participating are Little Rock Central, Little Rock J. A. Fair, Little Rock Dunbar Middle School, Joseph T. Robinson Middle School and North Little Rock High School West.

Admission is free and open to the public. Each performance will last approximately 25 minutes.

For more information, visit ualr.edu/shakespeare or contact Dr. Kris McAbee, assistant professor of English, at kxmcabee@ualr.edu.