article: The Shakespeare Schools Festival - an initiative which inspires schoolchildren to perform abridged versions of the playwright's famous work. From small beginnings, the initiative has grown into the UK's largest youth drama festival. And as the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death is marked on 23 April, we take a look back at its inception. "It all started with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989," co-founder Chris Grace explained. As S4C's co-founder and director of animation, he had already made a name for himself kickstarting the Welsh animation industry with SuperTed and Fireman Sam. But as eastern Europe opened up, he was inspired by innovative Soviet techniques which used models, drawings and oil on glass. "I knew there was a Soviet tradition of animation which was totally different to Disney and it opened my eyes to new ways of making content accessible," he said. "I saw that Shakespeare could be a bridge between east and west; between Soviet tradition and western tradition." Working in Moscow, he helped to create 12 half-hour abridged versions of Shakespeare's plays - not an easy task when trying to maintain the original dialogue - with each one costing £500,000 to make. It was a turbulent time, with production surviving two attempted presidential coups - against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 and Boris Yeltsin in 1993. On one occasion, filming had to be stopped as tanks rumbled by outside, shaking the studio. On another, the studio came under fire from rebels, with bullet holes peppering the walls. "It was very exciting on one level because it was a new Europe," he said. "But it was also fearful. You didn't know the price of bread let alone what the cost of production was. "Despite this, we established a really strong production and international friendship between Wales and Russia." The 12 films, known as S4C's Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, were created in Welsh and English. Initially launched at the Royal Academy in London and City Hall in Cardiff, they went on to be released in 70 countries and won three Emmy awards. By the late-1990s, the films had a "huge up-take" in schools, introducing pupils to Shakespeare "for the very first time". "Everybody wants something new, especially critics, and animation had never been seen in this way before," Mr Grace said. "Part one was making Shakespeare accessible through a contemporary medium and part two was to take those films being used by schools and make Shakespeare accessible to young people through performance. "I thought, 'if they're watching them, why can they not perform them?'" And so, in 2000, the festival was officially launched. Living in Pembrokeshire, he arranged for eight schools to perform at the Torch Theatre in Milford Haven. Each performed a half-hour play to sell-out audiences over two nights. "It's not often we get things first in Pembrokeshire, so being the venue for a national debut felt like a major honour. "Our director was a bit individual, not to mention notorious in my family for constantly giving me detentions, and she decided to set a Japanese theme around
summary: What links William Shakespeare, the fall of the Berlin Wall, coups in Soviet Russia and eight schools in west Wales?