“All the world’s a stage,” as the Bard once said. And on a cool spring Friday morning, hundreds of kids from all across the Denver Public Schools district learned just that. Pouring out of yellow buses at Skyline Park off 15th and Arapahoe, their tiny bodies were wrapped in borrowed Renaissance regalia.
Velvet skirts brushed the grass, high ruffled collars touched chins, and glitter-filled faces smiled at one another in passing. They were preparing to parade through downtown to the lawn of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts for the yearly Shakespeare Festival, where students act out famous scenes from Shakespeare plays for their families and classmates.
“It's a wonderful opportunity because otherwise kids may never have the exposure to something like Shakespeare and certainly not the ability to perform it,” said Holm Elementary volunteer coordinator Megan Craig. “You might read something in your classes, but to be able to actually live it is an entirely different thing. It opens a world to theater, to writing and English literature.”
This year, 95 students from Holm Elementary in south Denver participated in the festival, up from 60 the year prior. In total, about 5,000 students ranging ages 6 through 18 from around the district participated in the 41st annual event, one of the largest of its kind in the nation.
