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Established in 1988, The Nashville Shakespeare Festival enriches the lives of Middle Tennesseans with bold, innovative and relevant productions, setting the community standard of excellence in productions of Shakespeare. The Festival employs Nashville's finest theater artists to create innovative programs accessible to audiences of all ages, cultural backgrounds and socio-economic circumstances. The Festival enriches the lives of Middle Tennesseans with bold, innovative and relevant productions, setting the community standard of excellence in productions of Shakespeare and other classic theatrical works.
In 1988, following a dream of creating a Shakespearean theatre company in Nashville, a group of local actors produced the first free-of-charge Shakespeare in the Park production of As You Like It with a modest budget of $500 and no technical support. That summer, more than 1,000 audience members attended the six performances, and the Nashville Shakespeare Festival was born. During its nineteen-year history, the Festival has grown into one the region’s leading professional theatres and the local authority on the works of William Shakespeare. Each summer 10,000 to 15,000 audience members attend the Festival’s annual Shakespeare in the Park production at Centennial Park which is designed to be accessible to people from all cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Since 1988, 200,000 people have attended Shakespeare in the Park. As always, these fully-staged, professional productions are presented free of charge to the public.
In 1992, in response to the need for an arts-in-education program in the Metropolitan Nashville public schools, the Nashville Shakespeare Festival developed a series of fifty-minute versions of Shakespeare’s best-known works as “Shakespeare Samplers.” These abridged productions toured to middle and high schools throughout the state as well as regional colleges and universities. Over 150,000 students – many of whom have never experienced live theatre before – have been introduced to Shakespeare through the Festival’s interactive workshops and energetic performances. These tours have led to rewarding partnerships with the Nashville Institute for the Arts and the Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s Humanities Outreach in Tennessee, which assisted the Festival in producing other classics such as The Belle of Amherst, The Little Prince, and Rip Van Winkle to supplement the company’s Shakespearean offerings.
In 2006, the Festival performed Macbeth for 23,000 people through Shakespeare in the Park, TPAC’s HOT program, and in rural Tennessee with the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. In the 2006-2007 school year, the Festival reached an additional 3,000 students and community members through arts-in-education workshops and in-residence programs, including a professionally directed student production of Julius Caesar, performed by a diverse group of high school students from across Middle Tennessee.
The Nashville Shakespeare Festival was honored to host the 2007 Conference of the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America, which brought over one hundred professional Shakespeare producers from around the world to Nashville, and in the summer of 2007, celebrated its 20th season of Shakespeare in the Park with two bodacious comedies, The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
In 2008, The Festival found a permanent winter home in the Bill & Carole Troutt Theater at Belmont University, where it offers school matinees and public performances of its annual Winter Shakespeare production. Hamlet was attended by nearly 4,000 students and community members in January of 2008. The Festival also expanded its outreach in 2008 to include businesses and adult groups, providing workshops that exercise creative thinking, problem solving, and effective communication through working with Shakespeare’s language, characters, and themes.
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