Actors From The London Stage
Shakespeare at Notre Dame is proud to be the American base for Actors From The London Stage, one of the oldest and most respected companies of its kind.
AFTLS presents two nationwide tours per year, visiting campuses from Massachusetts to Hawaii during the fall and spring semesters.
During a five-day residency of performances and in-class workshops, five actors—who hail from such prestigious companies as the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre iof Great Britain, and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre—breathe new life into Shakespeare's works for your students and community.
Our Mission
Our mission is simple: to make exciting Shakespeare, performed by fine professional actors, available and affordable to American colleges and universities in the context of an extraordinary, weeklong teaching experience.
Our actors are uniquely prepared. For the Shakespeare production, each of the five actors takes on two or three major roles and several minor ones; each is usually responsible for the whole play, for there is no director.
During the teaching week, our actors bring their knowledge to a wide variety of classes, not only for courses on Shakespeare but also theatre, literature, and communication courses. They get students up out of their chairs and act with them to learn how Shakespeare's texts become scripts, words become actions, and actions become meaning.