Revisiting Shakespeare
Published in The Doorpost newsletter, Spring 2025.
What comes to mind when you think of the Shakespeare Festival? Little ladies dancing the Maypole in Elizabethan dresses and flower crowns? Young gents wielding toy swords and shooting arrows at targets? Volunteering countless hours to transform the playground into an Elizabethan festival? Constructing play sets, fitting costumes, applying stage makeup, and rehearsing lines? Or perhaps enjoying an hard-earned ice cream at the cast after-party?
With more than 20 years of Shakespeare Festivals under our belts, we are celebrating how the festival and play evolve while remaining true to the original vision. The Shakespeare Festival, inspired by Charlotte Mason’s philosophy on teaching Shakespeare, was brought to Redeemer School in the early 2000s by former head of school Billy Creech and his wife, former teacher Carrie Creech.
From the very beginning, the Shakespeare Festival was the culmination of a schoolwide, month-long immersion in the works, creativity, and ideas of the playwright William Shakespeare and the Elizabethan period of history. To this day, each grade level participates throughout the month with age-appropriate lessons in history, sonnet writing, puppet making, acting, recitation, and more. As children engage with Shakespeare over the course of their education, they come to appreciate his literary genius bit by bit.
“There are manifold benefits in putting children in the way of beautiful language and vivid ideas. The younger child develops listening skills and appreciation for the beauty of language … (and they) become confident readers and writers through the hearing and reading of well-written texts … the students and teachers alike exercise the full power of the mind in analyzing, comprehending, reflecting and synthesizing. These discussions generate an interior life as … students come into relationship with the past, the present and the transcendent.”
~ Mary Ellen St. Cyr in When Children Love to Learn
The main event of the Shakespeare Festival is the Shakespeare Play, which has evolved as the middle school has grown. In the early years, all middle school students played a part in the play; these days, students elect to participate as actors and in support roles such as assistant producer, marketing, A/V, and costuming.
This year, our play is put on by two current Redeemer School teachers who are also alumni – Language Arts/History and Drama teacher Preston Lindsay (‘12) and Science teacher Rachel Williamson (‘13). As they lead a new group of middle school actors and crew, they draw from their own experience as students in the Shakespeare Festival.
Mrs. Williamson credits the Shakespeare Festival for helping to shape her interest in and understanding of the English language in college and beyond. Looking back on the festival, she remembers the Maypole dance, as well as specific relational moments.
“One of those is [Redeemer School teacher & former Shakespeare Play director] Ashley Murray doing my hair before one of the performances and talking to me about high school. Now we’re friends and we work together, so it’s cool to see those relationships continue on,” she said.
We’re preparing for our annual Shakespeare Festival and Play! Students at all grade levels are studying William Shakespeare and The Tempest. We look forward to the Shakespeare Festival and hope you will join us for an evening of Elizabethan fun!
