Shakes-Peers: A Collaborative High School Shakespeare Festival

Lancaster Shakespeare Theatre looks forward to welcoming students and teachers back for the 6th Annual Shakes-Peers, a collaborative Shakespeare festival for high schools. This year's festival will be held on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 at the Ware Center in downtown Lancaster (42 N. Prince St) beginning at 8:30 am. 

Through this event, students and educators engage with Shakespeare through monologues, scenes, training, and competition. Since its inception at the beginning of 2020, Shakes-Peers has welcomed area high schools such as Ephrata High School, J.P. McCaskey, Lancaster Catholic High, Lancaster Country Day, Linden Hall, Manheim Central, Manheim Township, and York Country Day.  

Of the students and teachers surveyed by Lancaster Shakespeare Theatre's Assessments and Outcomes Committee following the last Shakes-Peers Festival in January of this year, 100% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the festival expanded their skills as performers and educators. All the responding educators indicated that the festival: 

• Provided helpful teaching ideas
• Strengthened their connections with other Shakespeare faculty in the region
• Provided a sense of "belonging" and shared affinity to the students 
• Increased their students' knowledge of Shakespeare and theatre in general

As one teacher put it, "It was a wonderful event! We look forward to returning next year!" 

Shakes-Peers mingles theatre educators and students from high schools across Lancaster County. Each student comes prepared with a memorized monologue from a Shakespeare play and performs it for our judges in a “monologue slam.” Later in the day, a Shakespeare theatre professional conducts an immersive acting workshop with the students while the teachers in attendance join a Shakespeare education roundtable. 

"I thought the acting workshop was awesome," said one educator in our survey. "The students really got a lot out of it."

Pizza is served for lunch (students are free to bring their own bagged lunch). In the afternoon, true to the "Shakes-Peers" name, each student is placed into a small troupe of "players" comprised of their peers from the other participating high schools. With the direction of the theatre professionals on hand, each troupe rehearses a scene from a Shakespeare play "on the fly" (for approximately one hour). At 2 pm, the public is invited into the Ware Center's Steinman Theatre for the Shakes-Peers Showcase, a public performance of monologues delivered by the student-finalists from the monologue slam earlier in the day. The showcase will also feature each troupe of players and the scenes they have rehearsed. Our judges will conclude the festival by announcing the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place monologue winners, as well as the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place troupes. The festival typically concludes by 3:30 pm. 

Registration is $15 per student and can be accomplished by following these steps:

1) Click on "Register Your Students," and select the number of students you are bringing (we limit each school to 10 students) 

2) Click "Continue" and enter your information as the ticket buyer

3) Continue to "Ticket Info" and enter the name of each participating student 

4) Continue to "Payment"

If you would prefer to pay by check, you can make it payable to "Lancaster Shakespeare Theatre" and send it to us at P.O. Box 8873, Lancaster, PA 17604. Please enclose the name of your school, your name, as well as the names of all students you are registering. There is no charge for you or any additional teachers/chaperones. Up to two additional educators/chaperones may attend from each school, but you do not need to provide any educator/chaperone names except your own. The total amount of your check should equal the number of participating students multiplied by $15.