William Shakespeare: not only who many believe to be the greatest playwright of all time, but also a name oft associated with high school homework assignments many would prefer to forget.
Hoping to change the way her students look at the literature, Anne Burridge, the English Department Chair at Middleburg’s Foxcroft School, has been working with Shakespeare in the ‘Burg, an annual festival celebrating the Bard and his craft, since 2015, at which point the Foxcroft School and Shakespeare in the ‘Burg decided to partner. Burridge will be a reader at this year’s event, taking place April 6-8 at The Hill School.
“We wanted to establish a partnership with the festival because we have a deep interest, especially in the English department at Foxcroft, in fostering our students’ understanding and appreciation for the Bard and all of his works,” Burridge said.
“I thought how wonderful it would be to bring Shakespeare to Middleburg, and that launched the whole thing,” says event co-founder and Middleburg resident Genie Ford, who mentions that she was initially inspired after seeing a performance of Twelfth Night at the American Shakespeare Center. “Middleburg is a unique place that has lots of events, most which are done by volunteers, people like me and Jo Ann [Hazard] who just want to do things to enrich the community.”
Now in its fifth year, the festival will feature an April 7 performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare in the Square, a New York-based acting company whose mission is to perform Shakespeare’s timeless classics “to the hilt.” Since their 2010 founding, the company has produced 18 of Shakespeare’s plays in Washington Square Park, free of charge to observers, and—fun fact—an alum of The Hill School, Dan Hasse, now works as the group’s co-director.
In addition to this exclusive performance, there will be stagecraft- and acting-focused workshops on Friday, April 6, plus a display of Shakespeare artifacts provided by Washington, D.C.’s Folger Shakespeare Library.
On Sunday, April 8, a champagne brunch will accompany performances of the plays that won the One-Act Play Writing Competition, for which the festival has received around 300 submissions from playwrights around the world, Burridge says.
“Our partnership with the festival aligns with the goal of not only looking at a text as a literary text, but also looking at it as a performative text, which is what it was originally intended to be,” says Burridge.
