What is the Project?

Dear ASP Community,

I have loved the above quote from the moment I encountered it. It encapsulates so much of what a theatrical space can be (and not just for youth, for all of us!). A gathering place. A creative expanse. A room in which one’s voice, perhaps previously dismissed, unused, or unheard, can thunder, and one’s whole self, perhaps inhibited elsewhere, can move, act, dance, and design freely. At its best, such a space holds and harnesses the storm-like force the quote references.

As you explore all that ASP Education has to offer in these pages, I hope this thundering sense of joy and possibility shines through. Our “playhouse” is so much more than a single room, a single theatre. Just as our professional company transforms spaces across the city into stages, our young people, educators, and community members transform and re-imagine countless spaces in Boston and beyond. Youth artists embody Amanda Gorman’s poetry through a shared kinesthetic piece in a juvenile justice facility. A 9-year-old Prospero commands the elements in the backyard of our main offices. Students march to Macbeth’s stronghold at Dunsinane through the seating banks of their school’s auditorium. English instructors learn to activate Shakespeare for their students by acting out As You Like It scenes themselves in the corridors of Salem State University at our annual Teacher Institute. And in one of our main performance venues at Charlestown Working Theater, one month finds young people tapping along to The Bomb-itty of Error‘s beat at a student matinee while the next month finds Puck emerging from a shadowy corner in our Summer Youth Intensive … the same room, yet a whole different canvas. These are ALL our playhouses.

And as these houses throw open their doors to you, our company is opening to new possibilities as well. For the past several years, all of us at Actors’ Shakespeare Project have been reflecting deeply on our namesake, on whether and how we can continue to celebrate the resonance of Shakespeare’s work while ensuring that he does not overshadow other tremendously talented artistic voices. As that dialogue continues, what I know to be true is this: all of the playhouses in which we create – our professional stages, youth studios, classrooms, juvenile justice facilities – are enriched as ASP expands the meaning of who we are. As we adapt and translate Shakespeare, as we produce timely works in dialogue with his, and as we feature the work of modern playwrights, we honor the best of who ASP has been and we shape what it will become.

We warmly invite you to join us on this important, creative, and playful journey.

See you at the playhouse,

Lindsay Williams
ASP Director of Education