Our Story

Welcome! We are The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles and we make art that blends Shakespeare with the history, landscape and people of Los Angeles. Every year we bring students and teachers to our downtown Los Angeles facility to see a production of Romeo and Juliet because it is the most common “gateway” to Shakespeare and we want students to get excited about it!

But not for selfish reasons alone.

Sure, we love Shakespeare and we want everyone else to love it, too.

But more than that, we want to break down barriers (real or perceived) that keep people from feeling that Shakespeare is “for them”. We also see the difference that it makes when those 400-year old words come alive with actors just 20 feet in front of the audience. We know that students who experience our shows come away with a new perspective on theatre, their communities and their ability to be agents of change in their own lives.

The Impact

The Romeo and Juliet Project  will give thousands of students an immersive experience of Shakespeare text as audience and art makers.

In addition to the performance, students receive a pre-show and a post-show workshop with a veteran teaching artist. These amazing men and women help students contextualize the play and then create their own artistic responses to Romeo and Juliet’s  themes, characters and story.

Our multi-ethnic casting reflects the reality of life in contemporary Los Angeles and allows students to see themselves in the production. Our actors are not just doing a show, they share our mission to serve the students with spectacular performances and insightful post-show discussions.

1.     Students. We believe that every child can transform their learning, their community, and ultimately our world. It’s our job to help them know that and to give them tools to succeed. Coming to a performance not only helps them understand the play, it helps them understand that they have a place in the artistic continuum from Shakespeare to today.

2.     Teachers. We love teachers. They work darn hard. And the teachers we work with are motivated, exceptional people who believe that their students can achieve great things. Because teachers partner with expert teaching artists to make classical text relevant to their students, they come away with additional tools to use in their classroom.

3.     Schools. Schools face continual budget cuts, schedule changes, and ever-scarcer resources. Nearly all of the schools that we serve are Title I schools which means that approximately 85% of the students receive free or reduced school lunch. For many of our schools, this is the only field trip that the students will get and the only time that a teaching artist can come into the classrooms. There is an overwhelming number of schools who want to participate, however our facility and budget can only accommodate a percentage of the requests.

What We Need & What You Get

It costs us about $28 per student to produce Romeo and Juliet, transport students to the venue, and send a teaching artist into the classroom. Schools pay what they can, but that usually amounts to about $3 per student. We have raised grant money to pay for part of it, but that only gets us to about $19 per student. 

SO...we need an additional $9 per person if we want 3,000 students to have the tickets, transportation, post-show discussion with the actors, and workshops leading up to and following the performance.

You can give at any level, but the perks start at a mere 9 BUCKS!