New Bards are born: Denver schools Shakespeare Festival draws K-12 students from 63 schools
Gracen Porreca, a drama instructor at Columbian Elementary, fondly recalled how a group of six students, under his guidance, founded the school’s Shakespeare club this year.
“We started back in October,” Porreca said. “It’s the first year we’ve had a Shakespeare club.”
The club from Columbian Elementary was among the hundreds of Denver Public School students who wore their best Shakespeare costumes on Friday during the 39th annual Shakespeare Festival, which started at Denver’s Skyline Park.
The festival is the oldest and largest student Shakespeare gathering in the United States, organizers said.
The festival included several outdoor stages, food vendors and more. Last year’s gathering featured more than 108 hours of performances across 18 stages.
“They’re super excited,” Porreca said. “We were able to perform our scene this morning for our whole school at an assembly before we got here.”
After a round of speeches, the students participated in a short parade to the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Headed by trumpeters, the parade column featured delegations from the more than 60 participating DPS schools, trickling into the various stages and venues throughout the complex upon arrival.
Some delegations were as small as a handful of students, while others had dozens.
Elsewhere in the complex, teacher and librarian Mackie Fritzmeier helped with some last-minute costume additions for Steck Elementary’s 27 participating students.
“The kids love it so much it’s almost as if the air is electric with them getting excited for their performance because they worked really hard for it,” Fritzmeier said.
“You get to see talent from kindergarten all the way up to seniors,” added Denver School of the Arts 11th grader Sam Charney. “It’s just really amazing to see how many people are here and how many people love the arts.”
“It feels really nice to connect with different theater people and we all share a bond over Shakespeare,” another DSA student, freshman Joshua Thomas, said before going on to perform as Banquo in a rendition of Macbeth.