About

MISSION

The mission of the Youth Shakespeare Project is to provide free, fun, literacy-based theater education to students from all backgrounds, especially students who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to attend theater camp.

WHAT WE DO

English/theater teachers Jaymes Sanchez and Laura Neill lead seventeen kids ages 11-17 in a production of Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing. The camp will run from July 7 to August 12, 2016, four afternoons a week, at the Howe Library in Hanover, NH (many thanks to the Howe!). Jaymes and Laura will pick students up from the Hanover AT stops on request.

HISTORY

Jaymes Sanchez and Laura Neill founded the Youth Shakespeare Project in 2012. As undergraduates at Dartmouth College, Jaymes and Laura wanted to use their passion for theater to contribute to the Upper Valley community. With the generous sponsorship of the Winthrop Bean Fund for the Theatre Arts and the Maurice Robinson Fund, the co-directors founded the program and ran a successful first season centering on A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Running YSP made Jaymes and Laura certain that they wanted to continue to teach and bring literature alive through drama. From June 2013 to May 2014, they attended the Brown University Master of Arts in Teaching program in secondary English; they graduated as certified English teachers, and returned to the Upper Valley in 2014 to complete YSP's second season with a production of As You Like It.

Now, as the head of a drama program (Jaymes) and an emerging playwright (Laura), the co-directors are back and ready to take on Season Three.

MANY THANKS

The Youth Shakespeare Project owes a great debt to the Howe Library for our wonderful rehearsal space, to the Dartmouth Theater Department for our wonderful performance space, and, as always, to Bill Hammond and the Winthrop Bean Fund for Theatre Arts for giving us our start. We would also like to thank Maggie Devine-Sullivan, Jamie Horton, James Rice, Effie Cummings, and Brett Gamboa for their help and support.