About the crows!

Upstart Crows of Santa Fe are a Shakespeare troupe for young people 10 - 18. We produce workshops and uncut plays with a focus on understanding and collaboration. 

Our casts create productions from deep explorations of Shakespeare’s language and meaning. Nearly all our productions are uncut and our actors develop their performances from their understanding of the text.

We provide opportunities to work with experienced Shakespearean dramaturgs, directors and professional actors from around the world. Guest artists have included Ben Crystal, Rodney Cottier, Devon Glover, and Edward Daranyi. We have partnered with Ambrose Ferber, Santa Fe’s own certified fight director, to teach sword fighting and stage combat. We provide workshops with Sean Boyd and Zoe Burke, professional intimacy coaches to help our actors “fit the action to the word”. The International Shakespeare Center’s Artistic Director, Ariana Karp is a frequent guest artist and makes her experience and training available to our actors. 

In 2017 we began an annual Youth Shakespeare Festival for students in Santa Fe High Schools and Middle Schools. Our Shakespeare after-school clubs for public, charter, and private schools worked with students who became participants in a weekend of performance. Past Festivals have taken place at New Mexico School for the Arts, Meow Wolf, New Mexico Actors Lab, and Scottish Rite Temple.

During the Covid shut-down we started and are maintaining regular close-reading groups and a “Shut-in Shakespeare Festival” where actors create their own monologue videos for our YouTube channel. 

As pandemic restrictions lifted we returned to providing outreach to Santa Fe schools.

In addition to producing Shakespeare, the Crows also perform the works of George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde. We have a dramatic reading troupe which performs Dickens’ Christmas Carol each December, and host an adult reading group which close-reads plays which the youth troupe are performing.

There are no auditions for any Crows productions and no prior theater experience is necessary—the only requirement is a desire to do the work. All who participate receive substantial roles. Most of our projects have two or three casts so that actors can direct each other and take part in every aspect of the process of creating a production.

Rehearsals take place at 7 Caliente Road, Building 1, in Eldorado at Santa Fe (which we call the Crows’ Nest), and in town at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (107 Barcelona Road, Santa Fe).

Production Assistants: The Upstart Crows of Santa Fe supports company members who are interested in learning how to stage productions of Shakespeare’s plays. Actors who have been in a previous production with us can apply to be a Production Assistant. PAs do stage managerial tasks and support their fellow actors with help in getting memorized.

Apprenticeships. Actors who have been in three productions (or two productions and outreach programs) and would like to explore the directorial process can apply to apprentice direct a production. Apprentice Directors help with staging, costuming, music, and lighting decisions.

For those who have assisted and apprenticed we offer the Blackfriars Project - an opportunity to direct and take complete responsibility for a production of one of Shakespeare’s plays. Blackfriars projects are granted by invitation.

Upstart Crows of Santa Fe is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization with no paid staff and no overhead. Tuition and donations to the company go directly to productions costs: stage rental insurance, costumes, props, make-up, sets, and a modest director's stipend. Any additional funds collected go toward scholarships for actors.

The Crows are associated with the International Shakespeare Center Santa Fe, participating in their educational outreach, community events, and producing their annual Youth Shakespeare Festival.