A new generation of Shakespeare lovers

CBeebies A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Fairies, magic, celebration and comical confusion - everything you need for the perfect play for a preschool audience. In a special performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream, CBeebies will take the audience on a magical journey into the world of theatre.

Swashbuckle’s Cook and Line, Joseph Elliott and Richard David-Caine, are the clumsy stage crew trying to help William Shakespeare put on his play.

William Shakespeare will be played by Steven Kynman (CBeebies' Robert The Robot) and Justin Fletcher will be Bottom The Weaver - star of the play-within-a play and the character who goes through the biggest theatrical transformation. Whoever heard of a talking and singing donkey?

Filming at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool and working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, CBeebies A Midsummer Night’s Dream will make every pre-schooler believe in fairies and dream of the sparkling woods where magic really can happen. CBeebies A Midsummer Night’s Dream is made by CBeebies Productions.

In support of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, CBeebies will be working with The Birmingham Reparatory Theatre to run children’s workshops with several primary schools across Birmingham to produce a series of short films around A Midsummer Night’s Dream which will be shown on the CBeebies website and Youtube Channel.

The theatre workshops will be made especially for four to six year-olds, to encourage fun and play around the characters and setting of The Dream

The first CBeebies short film will be launched to tie-in with Shakespeare Week and throughout the week of the 14 March all libraries running Rhyme Time sessions for preschoolers across the UK will be watching the CBeebies Midsummer Lullaby short film, to learn the lullaby song The Fairy Train sing to their Queen. Through rhyme and song, children across the country will be learning Shakespeare’s world-famous lines.

Magic Hands

In Magic Hands on CBeebies, a team of animal characters act alongside presenters Ashley, Donna, Simon and Aimee, as they perform classic tales from poetry and excerpts from five Shakespeare plays: Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo And Juliet, Twelfth Night, As You Like It and The Tempest.

The Magic Hands presenting team are all profoundly deaf, so on-screen presentation is in their first language, British Sign Language. Voice-over accompanies the original Shakespeare - this series is inspired by the idea that young children can enjoy the rhythm and meaning of the older English, even if they don’t quite understand the words. Especially composed music and sound design complete the picture for the hearing children and the animated animals provide fun for everyone, as they dress up and act out the stories for a young audience.

Magic Hands is produced for CBeebies by Flashing Lights Media

Horrible Histories

Horrible Histories is back on CBBC, with a special episode delving in to the life and times of the world's most famous writer. Tom Stourton stars as the Bard, as we find out about his humble beginnings, his glove-making father and his early life as an actor. How did he climb to become a royal favourite? And what was it like to be in the audience of one of his plays, where fruit was thrown at the stage, it was illegal for women to act, and there were no toilets?

Packed with laughs, facts and quizzes, the show ends with a song featuring every one of his plays. The episode has a special guest appearance from Miles Jupp. Horrible Histories is Lion TV Production for CBBC

How to be Epic @ Shakespeare

CBBC’s How to Be Epic is proud to present a special: How To Be Epic @ Shakespeare - with everything you need to know to be as epic as the world’s greatest playwright! A series of films voiced by Cel Spellman will be full of How to Be Epic’s trademark combination of maverick wit and factual gems and will feature stacks of entertaining insights from a host of experts and celebrities who are all mad about the Bard.

How to Be Epic @ Shakespeare is produced by CBBC Productions, the in-house production unit based in Salford, in collaboration with BBC Learning and will be working with the RSC and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Blue Peter

Blue Peter is going behind the scenes at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford (plus a tour of the main Shakespeare sights) and then presenter Radzi will be performing in the RSC tour of A Midsummer Nights Dream in Bradford.

Passport To Shakespeare

CBBC and BBC Learning have teamed up with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust - organisers of Shakespeare Week 2016 - to be part of their Passport To Shakespeare, designed to encourage children to have fun with the bard and his language. Hacker T Dog and his CBBC friends are going Totally Shakespeare exploring this amazing world packed full of exciting characters, intriguing stories and Shakespearian words and phrases that we still use today. With help from Horrible Histories, the CBBC gang have just one aim: to become Epic @ Shakespeare.

Launching in Shakespeare Week (14-20 March), Totally Shakespeare will ask primary school children to pick their favourite Shakespeare words and phrases, get creative with them and send the results to the CBBC website.

Shakespeare Week was established by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in 2014 as a way to share and celebrate Shakespeare’s creative legacy with every primary school child in the country. This year, more than 1.5 million children in 10,000 primary schools are expected to take part in Shakespeare Week.

ShakespeareMe

ShakespeareMe will let Shakespeare free on social media. Produced by BBC Learning, this iWonder interactive uses emojis to unlock the complex emotions expressed within Shakespeare’s work. The user selects the emojis that fit their mood and they are given the perfect Shakespeare quote to express those feelings on social media. The interactive will also provide additional learning journeys and a gateway to other BBC Shakespeare content.

Live Lessons

BBC Learning will be bringing Shakespeare to life for young audiences with two interactive Live Lessons in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company: one for primary school pupils and one for secondary school pupils, which will broadcast from the Library of Birmingham to schools across the country. 

Each lesson will use inspiring talent and unique access to explore Shakespeare’s language and work. Both lessons will be filmed in front of a live audience of school children from the West Midlands. The first, broadcast during Shakespeare Week (14-20 March 2016), will introduce primary school children to some of Shakespeare’s characters and the language they use. The second lesson, designed for secondary school pupils, will be broadcast in April and will explore the process of taking a Shakespeare play from page to stage.

BBC Bitesize

For children and teenagers, BBC Bitesize has a wealth of brilliant guides, videos and quizzes to help them get their heads around Shakespeare. Bitesize also features classroom clips covering the most popular plays, including a brand new series - Shakespeare In Shorts.

Meanwhile School Radio’s growing collection of resources for primary schools will feature Shakespeare Retold, a series by writers including Frank Cottrell Boyce, Pamela Butchard and Jamila Gavin, narrated by readers such as Simon Callow, Shirley Henderson and Julian Rhind-Tutt.

Also from School Radio: everything you need to stage a class musical performance of Macbeth and The Tempest, plus a brand new script and songs based on the life and times of the Bard.

BBC Bitesize and the Royal Shakespeare Company will work in partnership to produce a Shakespearean 'character finder' which will introduce upper-primary school children to a character from each of Shakespeare's plays through an interactive quiz - encouraging them to explore the complete canon.

BBC iWonder

There will also be a selection of BBC iWonder guides and timelines created for the season, which will be available at bbc.co.uk/iwonder

These include a timeline exploring the life and legacy of Shakespeare. The content will be rich with bespoke interactivity, video and audio, and the format is fully responsive, providing a consistent experience on desktop, tablet and mobile.