On Stage @ Shakespeare Is

Oregon Shakespeare Festival

OSF Elizabethan Theatre

Founded in 1935, the Tony Award-winning Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) is among the oldest and largest professional non-profit theatres in the nation. Located in a picturesque part of rural Southern Oregon, every year OSF presents an eight-and-a-half-month season of eleven plays in two state-of-the-art theatres and an the Elizabethan outdoor theatre. OSF also features numerous ancillary activities, and undertakes an extensive theatre education program. Operating on a budget exceeding $26 million, OSF presents more than 780 performances annually with attendance of approximately 400,000. In 2010, OSF celebrates its 75th anniversary. Hear a five-minute feature story broadcast on NPR produced by Associate Producer Dmae Roberts.

Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival

Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (NY)

The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival began in 1987 with a modest outdoor production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed under the stars in a meadow at Manitoga, industrial designer Russell Wright’s home in Garrison, New York, fifty miles north of Manhattan. 22 years later, the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is a critically-acclaimed regional theater, attracting audiences from the tri-state area and beyond. In addition to its summer productions, the Festival sponsors year-round education programs, including Access-Shakespeare, a fully staged touring production;Shakespeare Students on Stage; and Free Will, an artists-in-residence program which teaches over 22,000 students annually from elementary school through college.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (London)

Founded by the pioneering American actor and director Sam Wanamaker, Shakespeare’s Globe is a unique international resource dedicated to the exploration of Shakespeare’s work and the playhouse for which he wrote, through the connected means of performance and education.
Together, the Globe Theatre Company, Shakespeare’s Globe Exhibition and Globe Education seek to further the experience and international understanding of Shakespeare in performance.

Royal Shakespeare Company

Stratford Upon Avon

Royal Shakespeare Company (Stratford-Upon-Avon, UK)

The Royal Shakespeare Company is one of the best known theatre companies in the world, operating under its present name since 1961. However the RSC’s roots stretch back to the building of the first permanent theatre in Stratford. In 1875, Charles Edward Flower, a Stratford brewer, launched an international campaign to build a theatre in the town of Shakespeare’s birth. His donation of the now famous two-acre site began a family tradition of generosity to the theatre which continues today. Almost 50 years of excellence were recognised in 1925 by the granting of a Royal Charter, but only a year later the theatre was destroyed by fire.

In 1960, Peter Hall formed the modern Royal Shakespeare Company and in 1961, the Memorial Theatre was renamed the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. The repertoire widened to take in modern work and classics other than Shakespeare. Despite the growth from Festival theatre to international status, the values of the RSC today have changed very little since 1905.

Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival

Bard On The Beach, Vancouver, BC

Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival (Vancouver, BC)

Celebrating its 21st Season in 2010, Bard on the Beach is one of Canada’s largest not-for-profit, professional Shakespeare Festivals. Presented in a magnificent setting on the waterfront in Vancouver’s Vanier Park, the Festival offers Shakespeare plays, related dramas, and several special events in two performance tents from June through September.

The 520-seat Mainstage tent offers two productions performed in repertory from early June through late September. The Mainstage tent is open-ended so that the actors perform against a spectacular backdrop of mountains, sea and sky – a highlight of the Bard experience. The Douglas Campbell Studio Stage tent seats 240 and runs from the end of June throughCelebrating its 21st Season in 2010, Bard on the Beach is one of Canada’s largest not-for-profit, professional Shakespeare Festivals. Presented in a magnificent setting on the waterfront in Vancouver’s Vanier Park, the Festival offers Shakespeare plays, related dramas, and several special events in two performance tents from June through September.September.

Theatre for a New Audience

Theatre for a New Audience (NYC))

Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, the mission of Theatre for a New Audience is to help develop and vitalize the performance and study of Shakespeare and classic drama. Theatre for a New Audience produces for Off-Broadway and has toured nationally and internationally.The Theatre nurtures relationships with some of the finest American and European directors, actors, designers and composers including Julie Taymor (Tony Award-winning director of The Lion King), Sir Peter Hall (founder, Royal Shakespeare Company), Mark Rylance (Artistic Director, London’s Globe), Robert Woodruff (Artistic Director, American Repertory Theatre), Karin Coonrod (Director) and Bartlett Sher (Artistic Director, Intiman Theatre).

The theatre has an ongoing collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Cicely Berry, a master teacher and Director of Voice, RSC, leads the American Directors Project at TFANA, a mentoring program and is the first American theatre company invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the Royal Shakespeare Company. In November 2001, the Theatre’s production of Cymbeline directed by Bartlett Sher premiered at the RSC in Stratford-Upon-Avon.