Welcome to The Children’s Shakespeare Society, where kids grow big from the inside out!
We are a nonprofit, subsistence-style, built out of our kitchen, grassroots Shakespeare company made up of 32 kids ages 7-17. Every penny we make goes directly into the next production. Our sister company’s professional productions fund our Shakespeare kids' shows, and vise versa.
Photo Above by Rab Cummings
Small Batch Arts returns to Reynolds Hall this holiday season, December 18-23, with an all-new installment of
A MONTANA RADIO CHRISTMAS 1955
DIRECTED BY JOEL JAHNKE WRITTEN BY MAGGIE PETERSEN & DOUG MACINTYRE
TICKETS GO ON SALE OCTOBER 30th RIGHT HERE!
Performance Dates/Times:
DEC. 18, 19, 20, 22 at 7 PM DEC. 21 at 3 PM & 7 PM DEC. 23 at 3 PM
Previous Performances…
Poster art by Zoe Grinder
Come join us for an evening of joyous mayhem with the talented cast of Much Ado About Nothing!
Much Ado About Nothing is one of William Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies. When a Military regiment troops their way into the house of Leonato and Imogen, various dramas begin when Claudio, a decorated officer, is smitten with Hero, the daughter of Leonato. Benedick, Claudio’s best friend, and Beatrice, Leonato’s niece, are begrudgingly reunited after a war and, worse, a previous breakup. Don Pedro, the regiment’s captain, decides to play matchmaker with both couples, while his brother Don John, angry at his brother's success, attempts to foil his plans.
Tickets for sale here:
THEATER FIGHT SKILLS CAMP
Signups COMING UP!
Ages 10-17
For More Information Email: montanashakespearekids@gmail.com or call 406-600-1145
WHAT IS OUR THEATER FIGHT SKILLS CAMP?
Applying the basic premises of stage fight choreography which hinge on trust, consent and teamwork, we will have fun experiencing theater as a “Team Sport”! Setting our fight choreography to some of theater’s greatest classical moments while building respect for one another both on stage and off. Our skilled fight directors work in the professional field nationally and internationally every day. They know how to teach basic fight skills in a really engaging and consensual manner. Everyone can have a lot of fun participating. As campers become proficient in one skill they will be allowed to move on to the more advanced skills. After learning skills, they will move on to learning to directing each other using their new fight choreography skills.
Our Company of players employs fight choreography in every show we do! Below are some scenes from our fights over the years, as well as from some of our other fight camps in the past. This is proof that any age child can take part and can learn how to be methodical and disciplined to create a safe situation for all involved.
A Photo Gallery of Fight Choreography from some of our shows…
Congratulations to the cast of
The Tempest
May 2023
Poster Art by Nathalie Laubie-Woods
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
Photos by Anne Sherwood
Congratulations to the cast and crew of our October production
As You Like It
Thank you, Anne Sherwood, photographer.
“This our life finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."
Join our company of your actors in a joyful story of love, wit, and the healing power of nature.
Thank you for supporting our band of players for so many years! Here’s a peek at some of our previous offerings…
Visit Antarctica this spring when our little band of players ages 5-17 celebrate all that can go wrong when you mix a pair of lovers with a mischievous elf entrusted with, of all things a bottle of Love potion! Add to that a rag-tag troupe of mechanical repairmen attempting to mount a theatrical retelling of Ovid’s tragedy, Pyramus and Thisbe, and you’ve got hilarity at it’s best. Erik Pearson and McKenna Kelly-Eiding return to direct, ushering TCSS back to live theater. Shake off some of those midwinter blues and enjoy the ridiculous hilarity of this well-loved comedy written by Shakespeare over 400 years ago.
A look at some of our past performances…
MACBETH
Emerson Cultural Center Lawn
June 2021
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As a Thank You to Our Supportive Community Enjoy Our “Welcome Back to Live Theater Special” Flexible Ticket Price:
$5 Donations Suggested at the Lawn
Artwork by Nathalie Woods
About This Show
Coming back to live theatre post-pandemic is a precarious thing. Most of the population has been quarantined with their racing thoughts and halted ambitions as well as being inundated with a variety of conspiracy theories and questions of what legitimate leadership looks like for the better part of a year. In this production of Macbeth we want to explore appearance versus reality, free will and fate and how guilt and shame can lead to a cycle of violence through the self-righteous guise of ‘ambition.’ While the play deals with the tragically misguided ascent to power and bloody downfall of a tyrannical King in ‘borrowed robes’, it also delves into the effect this has on subordinates of those in power and the common person trying to survive in a war-torn world. With a pared down cast and re-imagined cutting that threads the supporting cast throughout the play we hope to allow our audience to question, along with us, the effects of fear and uncertainty against a ceaselessly ticking clock that has no foreseeable end.
- Directors Bobby Bowman and Sasha Kostyrko
Photos by Rab Cummings
SHAKESPEARE’S DOUBLE-FEATURE WEEKEND
The Children’s Shakespeare Society presents Shakespeare’s fairy tale, CYMBELINE & the beloved comedy TWELFTH NIGHT in one action-packed weekend!
Come enjoy two of Shakespeare’s plays over the course of one weekend presented by The Children’s Shakespeare Society.
Directed by Sasha Kostyrko and Erik Pearson Cymbeline, has everything a good fairy tale should! A wicked step mother, a mis-guided ruler, and even a fabulous female heroine who has the wits, courage, and determination to save her own skin! Our version, set in ancient Scandinavia will captivate and lead you on a journey not soon forgotten.
The other half of our players will bring you one of Shakespeare’s beloved comedies, Twelfth Night directed by Tonya Andrews and Hannah Palmer. Set in the 20’s in New Orleans with music composed by Stefan Stern, this mad-cap adventure employs all the best Shakespearean devices we know and love. Siblings divided by shipwreck, mistaken identity, a pair of hilarious clowns, and lots of crazy ‘near-miss’ moments to entertain.
Poster Art by Nathalie Laubie-Woods
Romeo & Juliet
September 2018 on the lawn of the Story Mansion
Picnic & mask-making on the lawn starting at 5pm. Performances each night beginning at 6pm.
$10 General Admission and $5 10 & Under. Purchase Securely Online By Clicking Below.
Our players celebrated our new set given to us by the folks at Montana Shakespeare in the Parks by holding the performance outside on the lawn of the Story Mansion. And what better way to break in the set complete with a balcony, than the tragedy of Romeo & Juliet?
Congratulations Directors, Cast, and Crew of Sherlock Holmes & The Watch Girl, the second in our Victorian Theater series. June 2018.
Melo + Drama means drama set to music. Our music especially scored and adapted to these scripts, sung by our players and accompanied by Bruce Hall it's creator, will again carry us along to another time. In this tale, a young girl Ruth de Belville is the subscription watch girl for the master time piece in Greenwich park, London. Wealthy business owners and individuals around London pay for her weekly visits to adjust their time pieces. Her pocket clock named Arnold, is a most marvelous work of scientific genius and incredibly accurate. Stripped of it's original gold accoutrements and hidden inside a plain silver shell in order to protect it's fame from potential pocket divers and thieves, Arnold has quite an intriguing history which led him into the hands of Ruth beginning with French nobility.
Written and directed by M. Douglas MacIntyre and Maggie Peterson, this sequel to last year's Demon's Cargo installment once again chronicles the tales of the Baker Street Irregulars, a band of "street urchins" which appear in the very first Sherlock Holmes mystery. This is Holmes before the world knows him as 'Holmes', a young student of science and law living at his laboratory supervisor's home while completing his studies in school.
Once again, M. Douglas MacIntyre does not disappoint history buffs with his attention to every detail. He's completed extensive research in developing these stories to create an accurate historical picture of the Victorian time period. Every street, every mention of businesses or locales visited within the play is trackable back to 1918 London, including Ruth de Belville and her infamous time piece, Arnold.
A Look At Some of Our Past Productions...
Fall 2017
RICHARD III
Directed by Cerris Morgan-Moyer and Benjamin Barker with Original Music by Moira Smiley
Poster Art by Nathalie Laubie-Woods
Directed by Cerris Morgan-Moyer and Benjamin Barker with original music by Moira Smiley, William Shakespeare’s tale of Richard III’s stop-at-nothing quest for power came alive as told by The Children’s Shakespeare Society at a PopUp location on a lawn in downtown Bozeman, September 8th, 9th, and 10th. The show highlighted the characters, presented in all their rich dimension as complex people who are steeped in their own personal histories which have shaped them.
Summer 2017
We so enjoyed our first Melodrama/Vaudeville show SHERLOCK HOLMES and The Demon's Cargo written just for us by our dear friends M. Douglas MacIntyre and Maggie Petersen with an original score by Bruce Hall, fight choreography by Gordon Carpenter drew us off our Shakespearean path and led us down an unexpected road to discover a part of theatrical history which plain and simple is downright fun and entertaining start to finish! Thanks to this creative Directorial team who trained under the masterful hand of Judy Ferree in Virginia City, we were transported back to a time when melodramas and the accompanying olio's were the movies people went to before there were movies to see!
Set Design and Illustrations by Nathalie Laurie-Woods
Poster by Eve Bennett
Press Photographer Tonya Lessley of Inspire Photo Arts
Photos by Tonya Lessley of Inspire Photo Art
Fall 2016
A Midsummer Night's Dream Was Dreamy!
A Midsummer Night's Dream was dreamy!!! Set in Lindley Park, our inventive directors, Maggie Petersen and M. Douglas MacIntyre of The Magic Circle Mime Company used the trees and hillside as our set. The setting sun lit our actors in a warm evening glow, and the a cappella vocals mixed with pieces played on the harp provided a unique performance which won't soon be forgotten.
Spring 2016
Our Spring Show of Hamlet was a great success!
The kids played to sold out performances all weekend! Thank you to our fabulous community for supporting the kids of TCSS!
Winter 2016
Thank you Moira!!! What a wonderful three days making music together!
The Children's Shakespeare Society proudly presented a very special music arranging and vocal harmonies workshop just for our home-schooling kiddos with vocalist Moira Smiley on October 7,8, and 10. Currently on tour with the legendary Irish band, Solas, and the new indie pop sensation the tUnE-yArDs, Moira is something of a musical magician! Moira spent three days with us last January and the kids have been begging for more ever since! She took 19 kids, many of whom had never sung beyond the confines of their car, and had them singing four-part harmony in Latin in under an hour...it only got better from there. Read on for more information about who this talented person is, and you'll understand why her name is linked to so many notable projects of such diverse genres, from medieval recordings of Hildegard Von Bingen's work, to performing her own style of original polyphony and body percussion mixed with her undeniably rich vocal versions of folk tunes.
NEW!!! We are instituting a Driving Discount Rate for all our events which gives folks outside of Gallatin Valley a credit for making the trip! Click on the link below to register or email or call for more information to do so offline. See "Contacts" page for contact information.
Fall 2015
Was full of magical happenings.... Our fall show was just that!
As You Like It
(And we LOVED it!!!!!)
Our fall show played to wonderfully full audiences on the lawn of a barn outside of Bozeman!
Two evenings of a wonderful, happy full crowd of guests spread upon the lawn, and once again an impromptu dance party furnished by the amazing Fiddaman Brothers and Friends at intermission... all tied up with a pretty bow of the final scene culminating right at sunset. The kids have outdone themselves, and are so coming into their own as truly fine actors and part of a Company under the patient and talented guiding hands of our directors! To top it off, Pecos Bill, the horse member of our family, made his debut on opening night, and was amazed to be hired just to ride in, and get paid to EAT GRASS!!!!
“And this our life exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, Books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and Good in everything.”
Spring 2015
Comedy of Errors
Under the keen direction of Tonya Andrews and Gordon Carpenter, we doubled the trouble, vaudeville style! What fun we had with Shakespeare's, Comedy of Errors. Our version, set in the early 1900’s gave the kids ample opportunity to bring to the production loads of off-beat magic, acrobatic, and slapstick comedy skills which they've evidently been hiding in the closet! Lots of laughs and a packed theater at every show, left us reeling with many good memories to savor for a long while! A hidden treat? The intermission impromptu dance parties with live music by the phenomenal "Fiddaman Brothers" (otherwise known as Dr. Pinch and Officer O'Malley) on their cello and fiddle... Lots of wild dancing with audience members who wended their way into our back alley for the fun! What a great weekend, we'll never forget.
Fall 2014
THREE MUSKETEERS
Taken directly from Dumas' first english translation of 1860, it provided the (kid-requested) challenging language, along with the requisite action sequences, which led to a play chock-full of opportunities for our heroine and heroines to charge against all odds and come out on top! It will long be remembered in this little band!!
Spring 2014
TWELFTH NIGHT
Images below are from our first Two Week Wonder production, Twelfth Night. Featuring live original music performed by the kids themselves, this show was a delight, and played to completely sold out shows at every performance.
“Performing Shakespeare is so different than other plays. When I’m up there on stage after working so hard to understand what I’m saying and the audience gets it, it feels amazing!”
More About Who We are...
OUR TWO WEEK WONDER PRODUCTION MODEL
Working with professional Shakespearean directors, the kids spend two weeks in an intensive process of putting the play together and performing it multiple times over a weekend. Every child who signs up receives a role, and we normally have between 19-28 kids between the ages of 5-17 sign up for each production. Casting happens about a month ahead of the beginning of rehearsals, at which time the kids are assigned their parts and given their scripts in order to begin independent work and research at home. Once rehearsals begin, they spend a minimum of 60 hours with their directors over that final two week period from 9-3 every day. We are committed to providing these opportunities twice a year, with plans to implement more educational workshops throughout the year, and possibly a summer production as well.
“Shakespeare’s language is really fun to learn... it’s really hard to learn, and you can practice it wherever you go....”
About
Find out about our organization, mission, our methods, and the results of our fun and hard work.
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Photography provided by Tonya Lessley/Inspire Photo Art
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