The Nashville Shakespeare Festival

Nashville, TN

The Nashville Shakespeare Festival was founded in 1988 by a group of actors who came together to perform Nashville 's first free Shakespeare in the Park production. Since then, the festival has grown into one of the region's leading professional theaters and the local authority on the works of William Shakespeare. Each summer, 10,000 to 15,000 audience members attend the annual Shakespeare in the Park production at Centennial Park , which is free of charge and accessible to people from all cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. In 1992, in response to the need for an arts-in-education program in Nashville public schools, the company developed an educational outreach program, beginning with a series of abridged productions of Shakespeare's best-known works touring to middle schools, high schools, and colleges and universities throughout the state. Over the years, the company has become a trusted resource for schools by offering enriching in-classroom workshops, creative opportunities, and performances for students. More than 160,000 students – many of whom had never experienced live theater before – have been introduced to Shakespeare through the festival's interactive workshops and energetic performances. In 2008, The Nashville Shakespeare Festival found a permanent winter home in the Troutt Theater at Belmont University, where it offers school matinees and public performances of its annual Shakespeare production each January. 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.

The Nashville Shakespeare Festival will produce Shakespeare's Richard III in January 2009 at the Bill & Carole Troutt Theater in Nashville, Tennessee. Artistic Director Denice Hicks will direct the production in a vaudeville-inspired style, exploring the parallels between politics and performance, with royalty as the stars of the show and the throne being the spotlight. King Richard III is one of Shakespeare's most theatrical characters, and this production will highlight his histrionics and his burlesque reign with footlights and original cabaret-style music. Festival creative collaborators June Kingsbury and Tom McBryde will once again contribute costume design and original musical compositions, respectively. The production will be performed by a cast of ten professional actors and an ensemble of seven Belmont University student actors. The play will be offered as a mainstage production, with public performances in the evening and school matinees on weekday mornings. The venue is a newly-built 300-seat theater provided by Belmont University , where The Nashville Shakespeare Festival is in residence each winter. Thanks to funding by the National Endowment for the Arts' Shakespeare for a New Generation initiative, an estimated 3,000 high-school students from 35 schools in middle Tennessee will attend affordable weekday school matinees and receive accompanying in-classroom workshops at their schools. Each of Nashville 's Title I public high schools will attend the play and receive workshops free-of-charge, as well as receiving assistance with transportation costs.

Visit them at: www.nashvilleshakes.org