I'm not Shakespeare

But neither was he.

I used to go to the principals office. A lot. I had my own special chair. But then, I found acting. The stage welcomed my... energy. Acting helped me stop acting out.In my youth, there were a lot of musicals and monologues. In my teens I was a producer, writer, teacher, and director. Enter Shakespeare. His words became a map for me.His language was huge, strange, funny, violent, beautiful, chewable. Never random. The rhythm, the shapes, the images, and the meter all provided clues about how to stand, breathe, think, speak. How to be.Later, as a young apprentice, I helped children leap into those big words before we fully understood them, and I saw the thing I have trusted ever since: Shakespeare is not a dusty book on a shelf or a crumbling statue. He is a ring of keys - able to unlock confidence, attention, play, voice, and becoming more fully human. He shows us how to be.What is this website all about?I'm Not Shakespeare is a growing body of work connecting Shakespeare, performance, education, and technology. I bring workshops and performances to conference rooms, classrooms, parks, and meadows.For your team
Copiloting Shakespeare: a 90-minute live workshop using AI and Shakespeare to help teams think faster and communicate better. Find out more →For your school
Shakespeare Club and Shakespeare Lives: programs for young performers at every level, in every language. Find out more →For your students
Look Out!: live sessions on creativity, AI, film, and American culture, delivered by a working creative professional. Find out more →Kids Cannon
Coming soon! We will be publishing a selection of our modern adaptations for theater groups. Over the years we have re-imagined and re-wilded : A Family Tempest, Hamletta, Macbeth the Monster, Midsummer in the Multiverse Meadow, Pericles and the Zombie Queen, Shakespeare High, Pursued by Bear, Kingdom Come, and now A Clown Show.



"How now moon calf?"
- from The Tempest

Copiloting Shakespeare

Shakespeare didn't have A.I.

But your team does.

The subscription is already paid. Now comes the human part.Copiloting Shakespeare trains teams to perform better with AI: building context, asking questions, thinking creatively, and communicating with language that lands.Not a lecture or a demo. This workshop is the rehearsal.90 minutes · At your location · Groups of 8–20 · From 6,000zł
Book Copiloting Shakespeare →

Shakespeare is the original generative text.

AI is the newest one.

What this is?You're already using AI. Your team is already using AI. The question nobody's asking out loud is: are we using it well, or are we just using it?Copiloting Shakespeare puts that question in the room — with Shakespeare as the text and AI as your live creative partner. Not a lecture. Not a demo. A working session where your team cracks something genuinely hard, together, and walks out knowing something they didn't know when they walked in.No performance required. No Shakespeare background needed. Just your people in the conference room.What happens in the roomThe session moves in nine steps — from cold read to full voice. Here's the shape of it:You start with a sonnet. Out loud. Together. Nobody's ready. That's the point.Then AI enters — not as a shortcut, but as a research partner. Context, vocabulary, the bones of the language. Your team learns to ask it the right questions.Then you go back to the text. Physically. What do you already own in this language? What's still locked? You sort it, you speak it, you find out.Then AI comes back — this time to build alongside you. Plain language next to the original. Two versions of the same thought. Your team starts to hear the difference between words that land and words that don't.By the end, people are speaking across the room to each other — Shakespeare in one hand, their own voice in the other. The AI didn't replace the work. It made the work possible.Four skills. One session
- Build AI context.
- Think creatively.
- Speak with confidence.
- Make language land.The details90 minutes · At your location · Groups of 8–20 · From 6,000złCopiloting Shakespeare is launching in 2026. Pilot pricing is available for first sessions — you get a lower rate, I get a real room and real feedback. If that interests you, let's talk.Book a pilot session →Why ShakespeareBecause it's hard. Deliberately, beautifully hard.If your team can learn to unlock four-hundred-year-old language with an AI at their side — in ninety minutes, with no preparation, in a conference room — they can do anything you put in front of them.
Shakespeare changed how we think about ourselves. AI is the next frontier of that conversation. This workshop puts both in the same room.Who built thisSeth Compton has spent thirty years getting people who "can't do Shakespeare" to do Shakespeare — children, executives, second-language speakers, beginners of every kind. He knows where the text locks up and exactly how to open it.His graduate research examined AI and creativity in international arts classrooms. He has been working with generative AI since it arrived. This workshop is where those two things meet.The AI layer in Copiloting Shakespeare isn't a gimmick bolted onto an existing workshop. It's the result of years of watching what happens when people stop being afraid of hard things — and start playing with them instead.Full bio →Ready to bring this to your team?First sessions are booking now. Pilot pricing available.Get in touch →

About

An impossible thing

Here's a truth: you can't actually become someone else.Thirty years of acting, and that's still true. You can study, train, research, rehearse — and when you walk out in front of an audience, something happens that nobody has ever fully explained. They believe you. Not because you fooled them. Because you both agreed, for a moment, to try something impossible together.That's why I'm still doing this.A room full of yourselfIn my twenties I was auditioning in Los Angeles. The calls would go out: "young guy, reddish-brown hair, casual, hip." You'd show up and there would be two hundred people who looked just like you. Some had longer hair. Some had shorter. Some darker. Some redder. Some taller, some prettier, some with whiter and straighter teeth. Some were more casual some were more hip. The same person, endlessly repeated, each one trying to become the role.A lot of acting is waiting. Waiting in that room. Waiting for the phone call from an agent, waiting for the role to be offered by casting. Waiting for the camera to get set up. Waiting for the scene to start.I realized something in those audition rooms. Mostly actors are waiting to get picked. I've since gone a different path - I picked myself.Miasto spotkańWrocław calls itself miasto spotkań — the city of meetings. It sits at the intersection of Central Europe's cultures, languages, and histories. People come here from everywhere. They bring different assumptions, different references, different ways of being in a room together.That variance isn't a problem to manage. It's a resource.I've spent over a decade here building programs — for children, for schools, for communities — that treat difference as a creative asset. The international classroom taught me something commercial auditions never could: when nobody in the room shares the same defaults, everyone has to actually listen.That's the skill. That's what acting is aboiut. It's what Copiloting Shakespeare is built on. Its what we do with kids in our performances and workshops.The workSeth Compton is an American actor, director, educator, and NGO founder. He is the president of Fundacja Aardvark Arts in Wrocław, Poland, and has spent thirty years making theater with people who think they can't — children, executives, second-language speakers, beginners of every kind.He holds an MA with Distinction in Acting from Manchester Metropolitan University (administered by Teatr Pieśń Kozła, one of Europe's leading physical theater companies) and an MA in Education from University of the People, with applied research examining AI and creativity in international arts classrooms.He teaches IB Drama and Media arts. He has acted in Polish films and television and appeared on theater stages coast to coast and around the world. He has produced a Shakespeare festival for all ages in Los Angeles and then again in Wrocław. He has trained educators for the US State Department.The through-line across all of it: Play. Make. Share. Care.What colleagues say"Not only a talented actor — a deeply dedicated educator. He has created a rare community of international artists who guide students in creative processes across all arts fields."
— Alex Helfrecht, film director (A Winter's Journey)"He is an innovator who thinks about inclusion and education in everything he creates. He will be an asset to your community."
— Jessica Hanna, Director/Producer; Chair of the Board, SITI Company; Artistic Associate, Outside In Theatre; Member of The KilroysReady to work together?Book Copiloting Shakespeare →
Get in touch →

Schools

Some books gather dust. Shakespeare doesn't have to be one of them.

The students who come to Shakespeare later — in secondary school, in university, in life — and already feel something when they open the plays. Not dread. Recognition. A faint memory of wild afternoons, early performances, something that was once alive in a room.
That's what this work builds. Not Shakespeare scholars. Kids who already have a relationship with the language before anyone tells them they're supposed to find it difficult.

Three ways to work together

Shakespeare ClubA full year. One group. One performance.
Once a week, 45 minutes, the same group of kids — building toward a performance at the annual Shakespeare in the Park festival in May. Scripts are drawn from a growing library of adapted material, tested in real classrooms, built for young performers working in their second or third language. No improvisation required. Every student has a role. The group does the rest.Available as a daytime class or after-school program.Shakespeare LivesA semester, a day, or a single session.A shorter burst — one semester of weekly sessions leading to a small presentation, a full school day cycling through classes, or a single deep-dive workshop with one year group. Flexible format, adaptable to your curriculum, your schedule, and your students' level.Previous sessions have included physical explorations of Macbeth, mixed-genre mashups and movie trailer voice workshops for high school students. If you're studying a Shakespeare play, we can build around it.Lookout!
A visiting creative professional. Your classroom. A live session that actually gets students talking.
Look Out! is designed for secondary school teachers — especially English language and conversation classes — who want something their students will remember. Sessions cover creative thinking, AI, film, Shakespeare, and American culture. Available as a single Talk, a hands-on Workshop, or a Maker session where students build something real.
One visit can change the energy of a classroom for weeks.
Available as single sessions or series · Adaptable to level and curriculum
Request program details →

Where it all comes togetherEvery Shakespeare Club year builds toward a public performance at Shakespeare in Park Grabiszyn — an outdoor culmination event bringing together students from multiple Wrocław schools. First your school. Then your parents. Then the park, in May, with everyone watching.
That's the moment the work becomes real.

What parents say"We have very good memories regarding our common times with Shakespeare and you 🥰. Our daughter is really a big fan of this guy and his works. Hmm I'm wondering why 😉"
— Parent, American School of Wrocław"You left footprints in the life of those two girls. 😉"
— Parent, Wrocław International School

Schools we've worked with in PolandAmerican School of Wrocław · British International School of Wroclaw · Dwujęzyczna Szkoła Podstawowa ATUT · IPS International school of Wrocław · Wrocław International School · Wrocław Cosmopolitan School · Navigo - Autorska Szkoła Podstawowa.Interested?
Get in touch and we'll find the right fit for your school, your students, and your parent community.
[Contact us →]




"Learning is but an adjunct to ourself."
— Love's Labour's Lost

Contact

Let's talk.Whether you're booking a workshop, exploring a school partnership, or just want to understand what this is before committing to anything — this is the right place to start.No lengthy forms. No automated responses. Just a real conversation about what you need and whether we're a good fit.Email: [email protected]Phone:
Poland: +48 794 617 602
US: +1 213 534 8269Based in Wrocław, Poland. Working across Europe and beyond.[Send a message →]



"Come, and take choice of all my library."
- from Titus Andronicus