Young Shakespeare Players

Join us this weekend and next!

Young Shakespeare Players founder and director dies, leaving deep appreciation for the Bard Richard DiPrima, who believed that children as young as 7 could learn and perform Shakespeare, and gave them lasting self-confidence, died Sunday at 81.

YSP Friends and Family:

YSP is worth preserving. Please help us, as we strive to preserve and strengthen it. Become a Member today!

(If you have already joined or re-joined YSP as a Member for 2022, we deeply thank you! If you have not done so yet, please do it now.)

When we started The Young Shakespeare Players, more than 41 years ago(!), our basic question was:
What, in our world, is worth preserving?

Our answers, in part:
1) Our human potential — centered largely in our growing, developing young people;
2) Our young people’s confidence that they can master, and love, “the best our species has to offer;” and,
3) Our language as “the stuff of thought.”

Over the past decades, thousands of young people have met the challenge, and used their unique work at YSP to uplift themselves and all the rest of us. Now in this especially difficult time, we are working to make sure YSP itself is preserved, and the young people of today and tomorrow will continue this important work.

And now we ask you to join us! Please help keep the flame burning and the dream alive. Donate and/or sign up for an Individual or Family Membership. Do it now. Please! (It's tax-deductible!!)
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2022 YSP Donating Membership
Individual: $60/year
Family: $120/year
PayPal: http://www.youngshakespeareplayers.org/support/membership/
or Mail check to YSP, 1806 West Lawn Avenue, Madison, WI 53711
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Our tuitions cover only a fraction of our expenses. And our very liberal scholarship policy — which is designed so that no young person is ever precluded from this work for financial reasons — further widens the financial gap. Of course, the pandemic of the past two years makes everything much harder. Your YSP Membership and/or additional donation in any amount will help enormously!

A full-year membership in YSP for 2022 is $60 for an individual (just $5 a month; 17 cents a day) or $120 for a family (just $10 a month; 33 cents a day). (If you can help with more, our young people will put it to very good use!)

And thanks so much for your help!
Our best to your family for healthy and happy holidays and 2021!
—Richard and Anne

Support YSP! Business Sponsors We welcome the support of area businesses! If you are interested in finding out more about how you can help further the YSP mission by becoming a business sponsor, please email ys…

If you are approximately between the ages of 7 and 18 — you should join us and be a part of Romeo and Juliet!

All in person (masked), at YSP Playhouse
1806 West Lawn Ave., Madison

Introductions: Thursday, October 14
5:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m.

Readings for parts: Saturday, October 16
Starting at 9:00 a.m.

Rehearsals (starting Saturday, October 23):
Saturdays: 1:00-4:00 p.m.
Sundays: 12:00-4:00 p.m.
(Special optional rehearsals scheduled on some week nights, and over holidays.)

Performances: mid-late February — ending February 27

Email Richard DiPrima right away to let us know you intend to be part of this production, and we’ll send you the script, story, and character descriptions, etc.
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ROMEO AND JULIET is one of the most widely read and studied of all works of literature. And no one merely reading the print on a dead page understands this glorious play half so well as do our young actors who perform it, and the audience members for whom they re-create it.

About 425 years ago, William Shakespeaere turned to "fair Verona" to create perhaps the most famous love story ever written. Now, starting very soon, YSP will re-create the beautiful, timeless tale. You should join us and be part of it!

It’s a magnificent tale — full of lyricism, heart, comedy, tragedy, and incomparable language. And it’s peopled by great characters besides the two famous young lovers — funny, clownish servants; the wise, poetic Friar; the irrepressible Mercutio; the hilarious and b***y Nurse; Juliet’s complex, disapproving, and very human parents; the fiery Tybalt, the well-meaning Benvolio; etc., etc.

There are many reasons that this is one of the very most famous and imitated stories ever written. And, there are many reasons that YSP has been recognized as "Madison's Best Youth Performing Arts Group" (Madison Magazine), and "Madison's Favorite Theater Troupe" (Isthmus). Come and experience it all for yourself!

JOIN Romeo and Juliet RIGHT NOW! (to start rehearsing soon, and to perform this winter!