Arts Education ~

“Richard Width’s teaching techniques work wonders, using a multidisciplinary approach to theater as a means for young adults to bolster self-esteem.”
Orlando Weekly, 2007

~ My Arts Education Mission ~

To enable each individual to stand their ground and speak their truth with clarity and compassion. To empower others with their own unique strengths and passions, teaching them to wield their inner fire rather than be consumed by it. To elicit and imbed the foundational truths of community, connection and interdependence. To establish respect and appreciation for difference with an awareness of the on-going opportunities for growth provided by an openhearted acceptance of diversity and variegation both within and without.

“I am one of the most fortunate people I know because after four years listening to you discourse on theater, life, and love, I can honestly and truthfully say I like- no, I love the person I am today. I owe that to you.”
Former Student

With The Orlando Shakespeare Theater (OST), programs developed and run included the year long Wymore Middle School Residency working with ‘At Risk’ eighth graders, the year long Edgewater High School Residency working with ‘At Risk’ ninth graders, The Young Company Summer Intensive gathering exceptional and challenged students from across the Central Florida area for a daily, month-long program culminating in a full production of one of Shakespeare’s plays, the annual two artist-educator tour of all Orange County Public School (OCPS) and Orange County private school English classes with the Shakespeare Alive! program getting students up on their feet performing Shakespeare with a special focus on the current OST student matinee offering, the Shakesperience week-long residencies in both public and private schools culminating in a mini-performance of a Shakespeare play.

“I don’t think I’d be the same without you. You pushed, questioned, and confronted in all the right ways, always in pursuit of helping your students become happier people- happier artists. You are a really brilliant soul.”
Former Student

Why Theater?

Healing trauma through emotionally corrective experiences is in theater’s DNA. The cathartic ritual is the religious tradition out of which Western Theater developed in Ancient Greece. The human voice lifted in communal story-telling altered reality, upheld the heavens and kept the universe in balance. Beginning with the Dionysus the god of emotive release and (when applied to a structured plot/myth) incorporating Apollo the God of reason and healing- theater was responsible for both individual and communal therapy and purification. Theater is the act of speaking what is unconscious or forbidden, asking one to think outside boundaries. Theater requires one to stand their ground and speak their truth with clarity and compassion within community. It is a virtual reality which keeps frontal cortex engaged, grounding one into the present moment while tapping into emotion, channeling the limbic memory of the traumatic past.

Why Shakespeare?

His poetry (iambic pentameter) is rooted in the physiological structure of the heart, mimicking its steady and ever present ‘lub-dub’, rooting the act of speaking into the body. His stories are built on the bedrock of basic human experiences and truths wrapped in both history and myth. These universal journeys tap into the collective unconscious transcending the petty divisions of culture, time, race or creed. His inventive use of language is boundless, having created words we still use every day. Thanks to all this, his poetry has the capacity to hold and process the intense and infinite emotion of trauma. The text engages both hemispheres of the brain at the same time: the logical left (sentence structure, language, grammar) and the creative right (image, metaphor, verbal conceits). All this instantly connecting with the physical through voice production, communicative intent and spatial relationship to the community. His text is the perfect repository for any and all emotion, no matter how big or small.

“We use Shakespeare for the capacity of his stories and poetry to both hold, channel and express the infinite emotion of the human experience.”
Width, NJ Juvenile Justice conference Atlantic City, 2018