The Bards

The Bards (formerly called The Bardlings) is Southern Shakespeare Company’s training and performance program for young theatre artists. Designed for aspiring actors, designers, stage managers, technicians, and other emerging theatre professionals, membership is available through an audition or interview process.

Throughout the school year, members participate in professional-caliber training, hands-on rehearsals, and production experiences while working alongside Southern Shakespeare Company’s directors, teaching artists, and visiting professionals. Students receive focused instruction in acting, musical theatre, voice, movement, stagecraft, technical theatre, and other theatrical disciplines, developing the artistic, technical, and collaborative skills essential to live performance.

As members of The Bards, students will:

• Train with professional directors, theatre educators, and working artists.
• Participate in workshops, master classes, guest lectures, and field trips.
• Perform in community events and educational outreach opportunities throughout the year.
• Collaborate with fellow young artists in a supportive, ensemble-based environment.
• Perform in (or work behind the scenes on!) a fully staged production presented as a showcase and then as part of Southern Shakespeare Company’s annual Shakespeare in the Park Festival.

Whether their passion is performing under the lights, calling cues backstage, designing costumes or scenery, creating lighting and sound, or bringing productions to life through technical theatre, The Bards provides a welcoming and challenging environment where young artists can learn, create, collaborate, and grow as artists, leaders, and storytellers.

Audition and interview information for the upcoming season will be announced soon.

For more information, please contact Laura W. Johnson at laura@southernshakes.org.

Christine Hansen (Bardlings Director, pictured at left) is a director and actor with a diverse array of theatrical experiences; from playing Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Linda in Death of a Salesman, and Julie in Sugar Babies, to writing, directing, managing, and performing at Mountain River Ranch (a wild-west themed dinner theatre west of Jackson Hole, WY) to devising theatre based on the works of Chekhov and T.S. Eliot. Christine is also an experienced teacher, having held positions at Idaho State University, Pinellas County Center for the Arts, and currently Florida State University. She holds a BFA in Performance from Point Park University, an MA in Performance Studies from ISU, and an MFA in Directing from FSU. Christine’s devotion to the growth of aspiring actors is unfailing, and her aim to make each rehearsal process gratifying and successful for all is constant. This passion is clear in her desire for her cast and crew to share her favorite phrase, “Again, please!” Christine is also mom to her incredible daughter, Davey Remi, and fur babies Calamity Jane (CJ), Barnaby, and Cornelius. She is overjoyed to have the opportunity to join the Southern Shakespeare Festival team as co-director of the Bardlings with the incomparable Phil Croton. 

Phil Croton (Bardlings Assistant Director, pictured center) was born and raised in London, and attended The Italia Conti Drama School, making his West End debut at the tender age of eleven, flying around the stage as John Darling in Peter Pan at the Scala Theatre–and he was cast again in the same role the following year! He also appeared on television in A Play for Today for the BBC and in minor roles in films and television, but his true love always has been live theatre. He has worked in Theatre in Education, in the UK, for Freshwater and Konflux Theatre companies. He was also the Head of the Education Dept. for the Theatre Royal in Bury St. Edmunds. He is working to instill a love of Shakespeare to the children and young adults in Tallahassee through frequent in-school workshops and as an Assistant Director of The Bardlings. Phil has appeared in such diverse roles as Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons and R.P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Other roles include leads in A Chorus of Disapproval, Separate Tables, The Real Inspector Hound, and The Typist. He has also directed various productions including The Donahue Sisters, Humble Boy, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Theatre Royal Youth Company, Maria Marten). He appeared as Oberon/Theseus in Southern Shakespeare’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2014.