The Young Shakespeareans

ALISON KORMAN Artistic Director / Founder
Alison is an entrepreneur and classically trained actor who, after working in Mexico and Senegal, returned to New York City's Metropolitan Opera and 92nd Street Y before founding her own arts management company, Korman+Company. During 25 years procuring and producing $5 million annually in still photography, she simultaneously performed off-Broadway and in various theatrical venues abroad. Living in Los Angeles since 1997, she has served as an Account Director for the Taproot Foundation, performed for hundreds of schoolchildren with the LA Assistance League’s Nine O’Clock Players, and began teaching Shakespeare to Title 1 elementary school children in South Los Angeles in 2009. She conceived the idea for The Young Shakespeareans Program in 2010, officially founded the organization in 2017, and has developed its curriculum in the conviction that unleashing the awareness and potential of Title 1 public school children transforms their lives while serving the broader community. Alison continues to perform in theatre, film and television. She received her degree in Special Education and Foreign Language from Washington University in St. Louis.
of John Adams Middle School
what we PROVIDE

The Young Shakespeareans Program takes place during the academic year. Each school chooses a Shakespearean play to read and discuss in the classroom from September through December, and selects the students who shall take part. Then in January through April over the course of 12 weeks, our Theatrical Teaching Artists lead the students in a carefully developed and challenging curriculum of academic and theatrical activities. The curriculum is specifically designed to foster each student's awareness of their own innate abilities, to complement those abilities with academic and life skills, and to help them explore what they can achieve through extended discipline, commitment, and teamwork. These efforts culminate in multiple performances by the students of an abridged but full-scale production of impressive quality for the school, and its families and extended communities.
