The University of Mississippi will host a free workshop for teachers to encourage innovative ways to teach Shakespeare’s First Folio, a collection of plays written by the Bard.

The event, titled “Shakespeare’s Text Demystified,” will take place on Saturday, February 6, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at UM’s Ford Center for the Performing Arts. Any teacher may attend the event and register online by February 1.

The workshop was created by the Folger Shakespeare Library to give teachers a better understanding of what the First Folio is and why it is important to the study of Shakespeare’s plays. The workshop presentation is a partnership between the UM School of Education and the Ford Center.

The first half of the workshop focuses on the Folio itself with hands-on activities that can be taken into the classroom. The second half explores the language of Shakespeare using the First Folio and will introduce teachers to interactive techniques to connect all kinds of students with Shakespeare’s language. Teachers can learn reading strategies that draw on performance and scholarship to bring all students into the language and the plays themselves.

From April 11 to May 1, a traveling exhibition containing a real First Folio will visit the UM Ford Center as part of a national tour celebrating 400 years since the death of Shakespeare. UM is the only location in Mississippi in the national tour. Shakespeare’s work would probably have been lost without the First Folio. Published in 1623, the Folio is the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays. Only 233 copies are known to exist today.

For more information about the workshop or to schedule a class tour of the Folio, contact Kate Meacham at kmeacham@olemiss.edu or call 662-915-6502.