From fighting in Vietnam to raising his teenagers, Michael Arndt takes Shakespeare wherever he goes.

The Bard's work, he said, is full of modern-day savvy. "There are a lot of lessons for a guy who's been dead for over 400 years."

Arndt is artistic director of the Kingsmen Shakespeare Company and a theater professor at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

On a typical day, you might find him organizing performances for third-graders, quizzing college students, or honing the talents of the company's actors.

You can see the fruits of his efforts during the company's annual summer Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival, which runs through Aug. 5 at the university's Kingsmen Park. The festival's 11th season features "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" directed by Marc Silver and Derek Medina, and "King Lear" directed by Arndt.

Arndt's passion for the Bard goes way back. He acted in his first play in college, and while serving as a draftee infantryman in the jungles of Vietnam, he read and memorized sonnets.

"In a horrible situation like war, it gave me a lot of peace just being able to say those words as an actor," he said. "I always find kind of a resonance in Shakespeare's stories."

These days, Arndt and members of the company work year-round to spread their enthusiasm for the playwright's work.

The Shakespeare Educational Tour takes the company's actors to elementary schools, where they teach and perform. The company gives CLU students a chance to earn credits toward their actors union license.

Actors come from around the world to put on Shakespeare professionally with the company, and an apprenticeship program draws college students to train on the stage and behind the scenes.

An internship program for high schoolers lets them try their hand at acting, and students ages 8-16 attend the company's summer Camp Shakespeare.

Introducing children to Shakespeare earlier than in the traditional middle school or high school English class can make the plays less intimidating, Arndt said.

"When kids are introduced to it at that level, they have no fear and they dive right in and love it," he said, "as opposed to the middle, high school level, where it becomes kind of foreboding and formidable to deal with."

Reading a play in a high school English class and seeing it performed are two different experiences, Arndt said. "People analyze and find the meanings for words and find each element of the poetry without realizing the main reason Shakespeare wrote in his poetic style was to help the actors find the right meanings of the words, to make words come alive, and that's what we try to do in productions."

Making Shakespeare accessible sometimes means parting ways with more traditional interpretations of his works.

Although setting "Romeo and Juliet" in the streets of Verona is one way to tell the story, one of Arndt's productions of the play adopted an Irish setting for the tragic tale.

The actors spoke in an Irish dialect that made the words sing, Arndt said, and the play began and ended with a funeral. "You get these feelings that these kinds of turmoil and strife that happen regularly throughout the world go on and on and on, and it's very sad."

High school interns also are tasked with presenting Shakespeare in more creative ways. During one production in the park's "Will's Corner," Shakespeare's characters competed in a contest akin to television's "Survivor."

Alana Dowden, 17, an incoming senior at Camarillo High School, is interning with the company for her second year this summer.

"I think reading it is nice because you can see the words on the page, but with the production, the actors, you can understand more the feeling behind them," she said.

Students in Jennifer Fry's third-grade classroom at Meadows School in Thousand Oaks have had a standing date with the Kingsmen Shakespeare Company since the educational tours started in 2000.

The company's actors give a morning workshop and an afternoon performance. The crowd goes wild.

"They really buy into it," Fry said of the students. "They love it. From year to year, they get more in-depth into the layers of what the meaning of the words are.

"I talk to high school and middle school teachers, and they all say they know the children who've had Shakespeare before in elementary, because they're so willing to read it. They're willing to take it on."

JJ Rodgers can trace her love affair with theater to a young age. She remembers performing in a fifth-grade production of "Snow White." Since then, she's done plays, musicals, movies and commercials, and has been helping the Kingsmen company stage Shakespeare since its beginning in 1997.

Local audiences are responsive and seem to identify with the story lines from Shakespeare's time that endure today, Rodgers said.

"There's always lovers, and there's always hurt and pain and death. It's interesting that no matter what age or what era you're in, really life is just the same."