Shakespeare, Reclaimed: Harlem Youth Bring New Voice To The Classics
NEW YORK, NY — March 13, 2026 — The Harlem School of the Arts (HSA) announces the inaugural HSA Shakespeare Festival, a student showcase featuring 14 performers from HSA’s Drama Department. Directed by Mercedes White, the festival takes place on Saturday, March 21, 2026 at 2pm at the Harlem School of the Arts, located at 645 St. Nicholas Avenue, New York, NY 10030. Admission is $5 — RSVP/tickets here. A talkback and reception will follow in the theater. The festival features scenes and monologues drawn from Shakespeare’s most enduring works — Macbeth, Othello, Romeo & Juliet, and As You Like It, among others— performed by a diverse ensemble of HSA students, including four seniors: Ellem Cabrera, Calli Belgrave Samms, Amber Ward, and Eva Carvallo. HSA Drama alumnus Nyleek Moore also returns to perform. While HSA has staged Shakespearean productions in the past, this marks the first time the institution has mounted a full festival dedicated to the form — a milestone that reflects both the ambition of its Drama Department and the extraordinary range of its students. “When I tell my kids that we’re doing Shakespeare, the first reaction is often a groan,” said director Mercedes White. “‘Ms. Mercedes, please — can we do anything else?’ To them, it feels like a world that was never built for them. But I tell them that the rhythm of Shakespeare’s language — iambic pentameter — is a heartbeat, the very same one thumping in our chests. That rhythm has never been far from us.” White, who has built HSA’s Drama program into a rigorous training ground for young performers, sees the festival as both an artistic challenge and a cultural reclamation. “My students are claiming a space that was never designed for them,” she said, “and in doing so, they are proving that the universal language of feeling — of love, loss, jealousy, and laughter — belongs to all of us.” The festival arrives at a moment of heightened relevance. HSA has long held that serious artistic training is not a privilege reserved for a narrow segment of young people. The Shakespeare Festival makes that argument from the stage — placing canonical Western texts in the hands of Harlem youth and daring audiences to reconsider who these stories belong to. Learn more at hsanyc.org.
Black News 
NEW YORK, NY — March 13, 2026 — The Harlem School of the Arts (HSA) announces the inaugural HSA Shakespeare Festival, a student showcase featuring 14 performers from HSA’s Drama Department. Directed by Mercedes White, the festival takes place on Saturday, March 21, 2026 at 2pm at the Harlem School of the Arts, located at 645 St. Nicholas Avenue, New York, NY 10030. Admission is $5 — RSVP/tickets here. A talkback and reception will follow in the theater.
The festival features scenes and monologues drawn from Shakespeare’s most enduring works — Macbeth, Othello, Romeo & Juliet, and As You Like It, among others— performed by a diverse ensemble of HSA students, including four seniors: Ellem Cabrera, Calli Belgrave Samms, Amber Ward, and Eva Carvallo. HSA Drama alumnus Nyleek Moore also returns to perform.
While HSA has staged Shakespearean productions in the past, this marks the first time the institution has mounted a full festival dedicated to the form — a milestone that reflects both the ambition of its Drama Department and the extraordinary range of its students.
“When I tell my kids that we’re doing Shakespeare, the first reaction is often a groan,” said director Mercedes White. “‘Ms. Mercedes, please — can we do anything else?’ To them, it feels like a world that was never built for them. But I tell them that the rhythm of Shakespeare’s language — iambic pentameter — is a heartbeat, the very same one thumping in our chests. That rhythm has never been far from us.”
White, who has built HSA’s Drama program into a rigorous training ground for young performers, sees the festival as both an artistic challenge and a cultural reclamation. “My students are claiming a space that was never designed for them,” she said, “and in doing so, they are proving that the universal language of feeling — of love, loss, jealousy, and laughter — belongs to all of us.”
The festival arrives at a moment of heightened relevance. HSA has long held that serious artistic training is not a privilege reserved for a narrow segment of young people. The Shakespeare Festival makes that argument from the stage — placing canonical Western texts in the hands of Harlem youth and daring audiences to reconsider who these stories belong to.
Learn more at hsanyc.org.
