Art Project Grant
Art Project Grant
Wise Fool Shakespeare (dba Wise Fool Theater) presents Hamlet at Lincoln Park Middle School, October 2019.
Tara Makinen: executive director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, musician; Moira Villiard: visual artist, cultural programming coordinator at American Indian Community Housing Organization; Amber Burns: choreographer, dancer, actor, middle school art teacher; Margaret Holmes: visual artist, poet, and former Children’s Theatre employee; Tammy Mattonen: visual artists, co-founder of Crescendo Youth Orchestra; Kayla Aubid: Native American craft artist, writer, employee at MacRostie Art Center; Ariana Daniel: mixed media artist, arts instructor; Kathy Neff: musician, Director, Fine Arts Academy at the University of Minnesota Duluth; Ron Piercy: jeweler, gallery owner; Emily Swanson: arts administrator at Oldenburg Arts and Cultural Community; Christina Nohre: writer and arts advocate.
Tara Makinen: executive director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, musician; Moira Villiard: visual artist, Cultural Programming coordinator at American Indian Community Housing Organization; Amber Burns: choreographer, dancer, actor, middle school art teacher; Ariana Daniel: mixed media artist, arts instructor; Kathy Neff: musician, director, Fine Arts Academy at the University of Minnesota Duluth; Ron Piercy: jeweler, gallery owner; Christina Nohre: writer and arts advocate.
ACHF Arts Access ACHF Arts Education ACHF Cultural Heritage
Our goal for "Hamlet" is to produce a Shakespearean play that is accessible and relatable to a diverse audience. We seek to dispel misconceptions of Shakespeare as archaic, incomprehensible, and elitist. We intend to conduct both formal and informal evaluations during and after our performances. Formal evaluation will include post-show online audience surveys conducted via SurveyMonkey. These surveys will include a mix of demographic questions as well as open-ended feedback and Likert-type scales to gauge audience engagement, attitudes, theater-going habits, and previous exposure to Shakespeare.
Our goal for "Hamlet" was to produce a Shakespearean play that is accessible and relatable to a diverse audience. We wanted to dispel misconceptions of Shakespeare as archaic, incomprehensible, and elitist. These qualitative goals are difficult to gauge, but we do feel we achieved them - most of them. Through direct conversations with our guests and post show surveys, we were able to ask about the accessibility of this production. 81% of respondents found "Hamlet" to be Extremely Accessible and 19% said it was Mostly Accessible. In dealing with one of Shakespeare's densest works, we were very pleased with this result. Where we think we fell short of our goal is in the diversity of our audience. We didn't do formal polling on this, but box office staff observed that the overwhelming majority of our guests appeared to be white. We did reach a wide range of ages and socio-economic backgrounds, but we were not successful in our hopes to achieve cultural diversity, as well.
Other,local or private