Long Island Student Shakespeare Festival History

The Long Island Student Shakespeare Festival was the brainchild of Dr. Jeff S. Dailey, Director of Fine and Performing Arts for the Deer Park School District.  

Students from Deer Park had, for many years, participated in the New York City Student Shakespeare Festival.  However, it became apparent that the NYC festival was not serving the needs of schools from Long Island.  So, in the spring of 2011, he proposed starting a festival specifically for students from Nassau and Suffolk Counties.  Carol Brown, the Director of the Art-in-Education program at Eastern Suffolk BOCES was enthusiastic about the project, and, through her efforts, Joanne Spencer, her Nassau County counterpart, also supported the effort.  Eva Demyen, Deer Park Schools’ superintendent, allowed the use of an unused school in the district. 

In the summer of 2011, Dr. Dailey had a meeting of interested parties, and everyone who attended showed great enthusiasm for this new endeavor.  In November of that year, Dr. Dailey led a staff development workshop for teachers from across Long Island. 

The first festival took place in April of 2012.  Several hundred middle and high school student gathered in the Washington School in Deer Park to perform scenes from Shakespeare and participate in Shakespeare-related activities.  The festival was held at the Washington School in Deer Park through 2015.  At the end of June in 2015, Dr. Dailey retired from Deer Park and the Washington School was sold.  The 2016 Festival was held at Five Towns College in Dix Hills, in conjunction with the early music ensemble Collectio Musicorum.  The last Festival was held in 2017, back in Deer Park at the Lincoln School. Over the six years it was in existence, more than 1000 students participated.

The Long Island Student Shakespeare Festival contained several unique components.A artist came to every festival, assessing the students' performances and giving a speech. There was also a musical component to every festival, with performances of music from the Renaissance or music from any time period that is associated with Shakespeare.