Even though Patrick Lynch has been teaching "Hamlet" for 17 years, the Marymount High School teacher swears that mustering enthusiasm for the task is no problem for him.

"Making it relevant is the most difficult thing," he insisted.

So Lynch jumped at the chance to attend UCLA's annual Shakespeare symposium, which this year was dedicated to what is often considered the Bard's best tragedy.

"A conference like this is helpful because it gives me ideas, so I don't teach the same way every year," he said.

The daylong event, sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the English Department, drew high school and community college teachers from all over the Los Angeles region hoping to invigorate their lesson plans with fresh ideas.

Each year organizers tackle a different Shakespeare play, with UCLA faculty presenting the latest research on the play, new approaches to highlighting timeless themes and innovative ways to use film to illustrate competing interpretations.

"UCLA has some of the nation's top talent in Shakespeare, so this is a natural way for us to help improve instruction in local schools," said UCLA English Professor Michael Allen, who organized the event that was held recently.

Launched some 15 years ago, the symposium originally targeted the university community, but local high school teachers and community college teachers started showing up. To accommodate them, organizers moved the annual conference three years ago from a weekday to Saturday and started waiving admission fees for any teacher who is currently employed. Now the event routinely "sells out."

On a recent Saturday, wait-listed teachers started lining up at 8 a.m. in the hopes of snagging a cancellation. The eight-hour event unfolded before a standing-room-only crowd in a 150-seat conference room in Royce Hall. To meet the growing demand, organizers plan next year to move to a bigger venue.

"Teaching Shakespeare is like climbing a mountain — you have to ask, 'What's the route? How are we going to get there?'" Allen explained. "Hearing a good teacher talk about a familiar text is exciting because he's showing you another way to the top."

Robert Watson, a UCLA English professor who each summer heads the nation's premiere Shakespeare enrichment program for high school teachers at the Folger Library in Washington, D.C., got an enthusiastic reception when he illustrated how the case of the conflicted prince of Denmark resembles a modern-day case of information overload.

"A poison cookie has been left on Hamlet's hard drive," he explained.

Matthew Mallen, a high school teacher in Playa del Rey, was confident he could immediately apply lessons from a presentation by UCLA English Professor Reginald Foakes on violence in "Hamlet."

"My students immediately want to react to violence," he said.

Meanwhile, Barbara Roth, a local high school teacher who has been teaching the play since the Vietnam War, was excited to learn about a "Hamlet" sequence in a 1993 movie she missed — Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Last Action Hero."

"If you love the play — and I love 'Hamlet,'" she said, "you're stimulated to see it through the eyes of each new generation."