(Cover photo: Northfield High School students at the 40th annual DPS Shakespeare Festival on April 26. Photo courtesy of Northfield High School.)
The Bard was in the house – and celebrating across downtown Denver – on Fri., April 26, with nearly 5,000 young thespians from Denver Public Schools performing at the 40th annual DPS Shakespeare Festival.
Central Park students from Northfield High School, McAuliffe International School, Bill Roberts School, Willow Elementary and Isabella Bird Community School were among those from 80 DPS schools who presented some of William Shakespeare’s most famous scenes at the Denver Performing Arts Complex (DPAC) on 14th Street between Arapahoe and Champa streets, and under overflow tents in nearby Sculpture Park along Speer Boulevard between Arapahoe and Champa. 
The DPS Shakespeare Festival is the largest student-level Shakespeare Festival in the nation, as well as the longest-running school festival in honor of the literary giant.
This year the celebration kicked off with a parade from Skyline Park at 17th and Arapahoe streets to the DPAC. Clad in Renaissance-inspired gowns and capes, fairy wings and cardboard armor, students and teachers marched beneath their school banners, while occasionally whooping a Shakespearean line or twirling in an Elizabethan period dance move. Students were assigned performance times but had the rest of the day to catch their peers on stage.
Northfield High School senior Margaret Freeman said her final DPS Shakespeare Festival was the culmination of her “biggest passion at school. . . Theater has always been a community for me,” Freeman said. “I love performing and all the razzle dazzle that goes with it.”
She presented the prologue from Henry VIII.
“It’s interesting for me to see how the language has changed but also how something written long ago and can still be really funny or sad,” Freeman said. “There are universal themes, and at the same time history has altered how we see the pieces. I love that about Shakespeare.”
Northfield sent seven performers from its Thespian Club to the event.
“The Shakespeare Festival has always been my favorite day of the year,” said NHS theater teacher and director Hanan Al-Naqeeb. “To see students from kindergarten through high school come together to support one another as they perform is a beautiful thing.”
NHS club members began preparing for the festival in January. Students met weekly over lunch to select parts, choregraph and rehearse. For junior Sophie Brown, who has attended the festival every year since sixth grade, theater – and Shakespearean performances in particular – have given her a “community of friends . . .
“I love Shakespeare simply because it is something that has connected so many people for centuries,” Brown said. “The concept that I am speaking the same words that were written hundreds of years ago is really cool.”
The Shakespeare Festival is “a coming together of people who love theater and love Shakespeare,” said Freeman, who is president of the NHS Thespian Club. Onstage, Brown appreciates that Shakespeare’s plays give her the freedom to craft the personality and mannerism of a character. “It’s helped me to gain self-confidence,” she said.
Middle School students from McAuliffe International School and elementary students from Willow Elementary have similarly looked to Shakespeare to develop creativity and confidence.
“There’s magic in theater,” said McAuliffe theater teacher Susan Frieman.
Since January, McAuliffe sixth through eighth graders have practiced their Shakespeare parts before school at least once a week. “There are so many themes in Shakespeare relevant to middle schoolers,” Frieman noted. “The students put in the work and come to find the language really beautiful.”
Eighth grader Thalia Hoke took on the role of Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“I really like the storyline of Helena and the way she reacts, so I emphasized words throughout the monologue to change the impact,” Hoke said.
Of the festival, she added, “It is lovely to spend the day dressing up in historical outfits and reciting Shakespeare lines in a space devoted to Shakespeare’s words.”
To help students prepare, an actor from DCPA reviewed performances from DPS Shakespeare clubs before the festival and offered feedback. Samuel Wood, an actor with DCPA, observed performances by fourth and fifth graders from Willow Elementary, who participated in the festival through the gifted and talented (GT) program under teacher Natasha Vasco.
Wood said he loved the energy of the students and encouraged them to imagine what it is like to “have the emotions of the character.”
Fifth grader Tom Simmons, who played Macduff in Hamlet, said, “Doing Shakespeare helped me talk in public and get over my stage fright. I like to see the high schoolers doing it too.”
Fellow fifth grader Tyler Gray, one of the festival witches from Macbeth, said, “I like doing Shakespeare because the festival is so fun, and it’s fun to perform.”
In light of the festival, and other annual productions throughout Central Park schools, an auditorium for the Sandoval Campus is considered likely for the DPS bond election in November. Northfield High School thespians, who currently deliver most of their performances in the school cafeteria, share the Sandoval Campus with DSST: Conservatory Green High School.
“An auditorium is the heart of a school,” theater director Al-Naqeeb said. “It is a place where students, parents and the community can come together to learn and to be inspired.
“For our dedicated Nighthawks’ cast, it is an opportunity to rehearse and perform with the appropriate equipment that is used in the industry should they choose to pursue theatre and on a real performance stage.
“Our students deserve the chance to shine.”
(Periodically the Foundation for Sustainable Urban Communities gives grants and technical support to Central Park schools.)
