On a recent sunny May afternoon a group of 35 middle and high school students excitedly entered Alumni Auditorium admiring the ornate chandeliers and enormous windows. But their enthusiasm peaked when 11 Brown students and faculty from the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown began a series of tongue-twisters, lip trills and other "crazy" warm ups at the start of a 90-minute Shakespeare workshop.

The workshop was aimed at helping public, private, and charter school students prepare for their May 19th performance of "Romeo and Juliet" at Veteran's Memorial Auditorium, a city-wide production sponsored by Shakespeare in the City, a program produced by the Lincoln School in Providence that features over 200 middle and high school performers from Providence city schools. The Brown students were meeting with this smaller group to share their talents and love for Shakespeare and provide some tips on how to effectively use their voices and gestures to perform the Bard's work.

But the experience was fruitful for the Brown students as well. Deniz Cam, a graduating senior from Turkey, said of the workshop:

I was so thankful to be part of the workshop. It gave us a platform to do theatre across ages, places and identities! It was a very valuable experience for me especially as a foreigner.

Other Brown University theatre concentrators included: Jason Roth, Frankie Troncoso, Kevin Kelly, Amelia Scaramucci, Deniz Cam, Hannah Margolin, Shannon Sotomayor, Sienna Vann, Fletcher Bell, Timothy Jeng and Natalie McDonald.

For the past two years, under the leadership of Connie Crawford, Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown students have been visiting select public schools to help the teachers prepare their scenes for the annual Shakespeare in the City performance.

For the first time this year, 35 students and teachers came to Brown to participate in the acting and voice workshop. The schools included Paul Cuffee High, Trinity Academy of Performing Arts and Gilbert Stuart, Roger Williams, Nathanael Greene, DelSesto, and Nathan Bishop middle schools.

Crawford along with Thom Jones, Director of Voice and Speech at Brown/Trinity, who helped plan the workshop, urge their students to try teaching, both as a way for them to better understand the skills they’re learning, but also to engage with their communities. Crawford says:

When undergraduates take their passions, talents and interests into the community, especially into schools and youth development organizations, teenagers see college students following their dreams, and persisting in doing challenging work. We know that there are multiple paths to success; learning how to present yourself, your voice and your ideas on stage and in a community through a complex text like Romeo and Juliet, is one of those pathways.

Shakespeare in the City was founded by Lincoln School eighth grade English teacher, Martha Douglas-Osmundson, based on a program she saw at the Globe Theatre in London in 2008. In Shakespeare in the City, each school performs one scene of a Shakespeare play on the stage at Vets. The aim of the program is to create a community among Providence public and private school teachers; and to bring together a diverse community of middle and high school students who are exploring Shakespeare’s themes and language at school. This year more than 200 students from 25 Providence schools have been reading and performing Romeo and Juliet in their English and after school theatre classes. This work will culminate in a performance with Shakespeare in the City in which each school presents one scene from the play at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium.