Complement your Curriculum
and Spice Up your Shakespeare with Professional
Actors Mark and Hollis McCarthy

Guest Artists/Teachers for Notre Dame University, Wabash College and Victory Gardens Theatre's Drama in the Schools Program, among others.

Join the Chicago Public School teachers who, for the past 3 years, have had Mark and Hollis bring alive Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet for students by taking drama from the dusty page to the exciting stage.

Visiting English classrooms with a flexible curriculum from three days to two weeks, we turn students on to the electrifying drama of Shakespeare by:

• Performing excerpts from the play each class is studying, thus:
  • bringing the Bard's dynamic characters alive and reinforcing your curriculum's plot and thematic studies,
  • letting students relate by revealing character motivations and passions and showing how they change,
• Giving perspective on the plays by sharing details of:
  • performance history (we've done professional productions of all three plays),
  • Renaissance times, dress and theatrical history,
  • Shakespeare's incomparable use of language (metaphor, simile, oxymorons, etc.),
• Involving students in the performance with "line of the day" exercises and more,
• Hooking them on the text by:
  • revealing the comedy within the tragedy,
  • getting them to relate to the timeless themes of love, hate, violence etc.,
  • performing rapier & dagger or broadsword fight excerpts from each play,
  • revealing Shakespeare's "secret code" of directions to actors in his verse structure.

As working actors specializing in Shakespeare, our teaching is spiced up by our performing skills, and we bond easily with students of all ages. Fifteen years of nationwide stage, television and film acting experience gives us added legitimacy with students who think TV and movies are cool. W e have been able to successfully translate this into convincing them that Shakespeare is cool, which has been tremendously satisfying for us.

We combine our experience performing major roles in more than a dozen professional Shakespearean productions, our liberal arts degrees (see below), and our advanced Shakespeare training to assist students in making the text their own, striving to make them as comfortable and eloquent with Shakespeare's language as they are with their own slang.

Mark & Hollis McCarthy's training (see resumes for details):

• Master of Fine Arts in Acting, University of Missouri at Kansas City
• Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre with honors, University of Toledo
• Shakespeare training: Derek Clarke (of National Theatre Great Britain); Jane Whittenshaw (of Royal Shakespeare Co.)
• Combat training: Society of American Fight Directors, rapier-dagger, broadsword, unarmed

Quotes from various freshman students from Schurz High School, re. Romeo & Juliet, 2004:

"I really don't like Shakespeare, but the way you put it, I guess it's kind of fun!"

"You guys are sensational actors. You brought the play to life. I learned new words and terms (ex. Iambic Pentameter, antithesis, and oxymoron.) I hope you guys will come back..."

"Even though it looked like I wasn't paying attention in class, I really liked it. You made the play come alive!! Especially the sword fight was exciting it was really cool."

Call soon! The early teacher gets the professional actors to bring the bard alive!