Shakespeare Schools Festival Sets the Stage For A Brighter Future At London's Royal Court Theatre

Online, May 14, 2012 (Newswire.com) - For quotes, interviews or further information please contact: Annie Hughes: annie.hughes@ssf.uk.com/ 0207 601 1811

Shakespeare Schools Festival Sets the Stage for a Brighter Future at London's Royal Court Theatre

Hearts were beating fast last night as excited children, between the ages of eight and 18, waited in the wings for their big moment on stage at the Royal Court Theatre for the Shakespeare Schools Festival (SSF) Gala. This was a life changing experience for the children involved and a proud moment for the national charity SSF, which enables the children to perform Shakespeare in a professional theatre. www.ssf.uk.com

TV presenter and comedian Sue Perkins and actress Jenny Agutter also stepped into the spotlight, to help raise vital funds for the Festival's future along with a wealth of high profile support in the audience. Guests included Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove, Private Eye Editor and satirist Ian Hislop, Actor John Sessions, renowned Professor of Shakespeare Stanley Wells and Cherie Booth QC.

The programme included well-loved scenes from Twelfth Night, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream performed by children as young as eight, who have made the Bard's famous lines their own.

London's St Marylebone School opened the evening with devised scenes inspired by their production of Julius Caesar as performed at The Unicorn Theatre, Southwark last autumn as part of the Shakespeare Schools Festival's core annual project.

Talbot Specialist School, from Sheffield performed their version of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' making the play their own with an enchanted forest where characters hide in the trees and comic mechanicals who appear drunk as they enter the heady fairy kingdom. The cast, which included students with a variety of learning difficulties and disabilities, performed with confidence, style, professionalism and gusto.

St. John Fisher Catholic High School, Peterborough, turned the stage into a scene from a western shoot out with their version of Twelfth Night and Overchurch Junior School presented a 10 minute excerpt of 'The Scottish Play' - transforming one of London's most prestigious stages into a Highland heath, complete with wicked recantations, brave warriors and some of Shakespeare's most famous lines.

The evening also previewed a finalist from the BBC's soon to be televised 'Off By Heart Shakespeare' Contest, for which Festival Director Chris Grace judged 62 regional finalists at workshops co-devised by SSF and the BBC.

Guest performer Jenny Agutter, who was Miranda in Peter Hall's 1972production of The Tempest at The National Theatre, this time played the role of her conjurer father, Prospero. In doing so, she helped worked magic amongst the audience who were invited to 'Sponsor a Night' in one of the Festival's 90 theatres.

Agutter said of the event, 'The Royal Court Theatre is renowned for pioneering new work, and it's exciting to think that SSF will bring together something old and something new upon this stage. The young people performing Shakespeare here are doing something momentous by receiving a baton of history and, through Shakespeare Schools Festival, delivering it to a new generation.'

Shakespeare Schools Festival enables 15,000 young people each year to perform Shakespeare's famous words on professional stages across the country, aiming not so much to create actors as to develop confidence, and give children a sense of achievement and aspiration.

SSF CEO, Penelope Middelboe said:

'This evening has been very important to us. We have been able to challenge current preconceptions that young people are under achieving or that education is being dumbed down. Time and again, the teachers and participants in the Shakespeare Schools Festival exceed``` the expectations of their peers and themselves. Eyes are suddenly opened to a realm that once seemed inaccessible.'

The Festival costs £1.2 million per year to run, £450,000 of which has to be raised by the fundraising team. This works out at £25 per child, or £500 per night.