In March of 2026, Peer Talk and the students of Willie Brown Middle School received a very special visitor from 400 years in the past: the Bard himself, William Shakespeare!

Thanks to Kevin Patterson of Red Barn Productions, Peer Talk got in touch with Joseph Schmitz, an actor who has performed as Shakespeare at the Northern California Renaissance Faire for the past three decades. Schmitz is also a teacher of Shakespeare's Heartbeat — a performing arts program for neurodiverse students to engage with theatre through Shakespeare's iambic pentameter — as part of Eureka Street Learning in San Francisco.

Schmitz joined our podcast in-character as William Shakespeare to answer questions from Ms. Vanessa Paiz's Eighth Grade English class, who had just studied and performed Twelfth Night. Join the students as they learn more about Shakespeare's life, the world of theatre in the 15th–16th Centuries, and how stage plays from hundreds of years ago can still resonate with audiences in the modern day.