The American Shakespeare Theatre was a theater company based in Stratford, Connecticut, United States. It was formed in the early 1950s by Lawrence Langner, Lincoln Kirstein, John Percy Burrell, and philanthropist Joseph Verner Reed. The American Shakespeare Festival Theatre was constructed and the program opened on July 12, 1955, with Julius Caesar . [1] The theater building burned to the ground on January 13, 2019. [2] [3]
Plays were produced at the Festival Theatre in Stratford from 1955 until the company ceased operations in the mid-1980s. [4] The company focused on American interpretations of William Shakespeare's plays, but occasionally produced plays by other playwrights. Other playwrights included: T.S. Eliot, Bernard Shaw, Sophocles, Giuseppe Verdi, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, and William Wycherley.
When founded in 1955, the first artistic director was Denis Carey, who had managed The Old Vic. Under Carey's reign, the results were neither impressive financially nor artistically. [5] John Houseman took over as artistic director in 1956, and his associate director was Jack Landau (director). Houseman resigned his position in August 1959 and Landau was promoted one month later. [6]
The Hartford Courant has posted a poorly-organized but nearly complete history of productions at the theater. [7]
It was the home of the American Shakespeare Festival. [8]
The last full season of the festival as a producing organization was 1982. The last production on the theater stage was a one-person show of The Tempest in September 1989. [1] Previous efforts had included plans to raise money to renovate the structure as well as alternate plans to demolish it and construct an amphitheater and black box theater in its place. [9]
Notable actors involved with the American Shakespeare Theatre included: [10]
One of seven crests donated by the Timex corporation was stolen in March 2012. Each of the crests represented a different Shakespearean play. Timex has had a long affiliation with the theatre, starting with a donation of "the world's only properly calibrated sundial" in 1956. [11]
In 2013, Beer Manager Steven Bilodeau of Wines Unlimited and Pete Rodrigues of Captain's Keg organized a beer festival on the grounds of the American Shakespeare Theatre called the ShakesBeer Festival in order to raise funds towards the restoration and reopening of the famed theatre. The ShakesBeer Festival held on August 23, 2014, raised over $30,000 and donated $20,000 to the restoration efforts after final expenses. This event was designed to be an annual event in order to bring in a source of revenue to the theatre and to raise awareness. [12] [13]
The 9th Festival! Stratford presented A Midsummer Night's Dream , performed by the Connecticut Free Shakespeare, on the grounds July 31 through August 1, 2013. [14]
On Sunday, January 13, 2019, the theatre burned to the ground from a massive fire. The structure was unoccupied at the time and had been vacant for thirty years. No fatalities or injuries occurred, and nothing was recovered from the building.
The cause of the fire remained unknown for several months. [15] In April 2019, three local teenagers – Logan Caraballo, Vincent Keller, and Christopher Sakowicz [16] – were charged as adults with arson, burglary, and other felonies, in connection with the theatre fire. [17] The three teenagers were charged with starting five additional fires in the months following the theatre fire. [18]
Although the trio originally pled not guilty in court, they publicly confessed after the theatre arson on Snapchat. [19] Sakowicz and Keller later changed their pleas to guilty, with Sakowicz being found primarily responsible and receiving a ten-year prison sentence as well as 15 years special parole and mandatory psychiatric treatment. [20] Keller potentially faces up to 18 months in prison, while Caraballo's case remains pending and sealed as of December 2022. [21]
The Shakespeare Academy at Stratford said it plans to continue to stage outdoor performances at the property during the summer of 2019. [22]
Stratford-upon-Avon, commonly known as just Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district, in the county of Warwickshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It is situated on the River Avon, 91 miles (146 km) north-west of London, 22 miles (35 km) south-east of Birmingham and 8 miles (13 km) south-west of Warwick. The town is the southernmost point of the Arden area on the edge of the Cotswolds. In the 2021 census Stratford had a population of 30,495.
Arson is the crime of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, watercraft, or forests. The crime is typically classified as a felony, with instances involving a greater degree of risk to human life or property carrying a stricter penalty. Arson which results in death can be further prosecuted as manslaughter or murder. A common motive for arson is to commit insurance fraud. In such cases, a person destroys their own property by burning it and then lies about the cause in order to collect against their insurance policy.
Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer was a Canadian actor. His career spanned seven decades, gaining him recognition for his performances in film, stage, and television. He received multiple accolades, including an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards, making him the only Canadian recipient of the "Triple Crown of Acting". He also received a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award as well as a nomination for a Grammy Award.
Stratford is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. It is situated on Long Island Sound at the mouth of the Housatonic River. The town is part of the Greater Bridgeport Planning Region, and the Bridgeport–Stamford–Norwalk Metropolitan Statistical Area. It was settled by Puritans in 1639.
In theatre, a thrust stage is one that extends into the audience on three sides and is connected to the backstage area by its upstage end. A thrust has the benefit of greater intimacy between performers and the audience than a proscenium, while retaining the utility of a backstage area. Entrances onto a thrust are most readily made from backstage, although some theatres provide for performers to enter through the audience using vomitory entrances. A theatre in the round, exposed on all sides to the audience, is without a backstage and relies entirely on entrances in the auditorium or from under the stage. As with an arena, the audience in a thrust stage theatre may view the stage from three or more sides. Because the audience can view the performance from a variety of perspectives, it is usual for the blocking, props and scenery to receive thorough consideration to ensure that no perspective is blocked from view. A high backed chair, for instance, when placed stage right, could create a blind spot in the stage left action.
Sacred Heart University (SHU) is a private, Roman Catholic university in Fairfield, Connecticut. It was founded in 1963 by Walter W. Curtis, Bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Sacred Heart was the first Catholic university in the United States to be staffed by the laity.
Center Stage is the state theater of Maryland, and Baltimore's largest professional producing theater.
Pleasure Beach is the Bridgeport portion of a Connecticut barrier beach that extends 2.5 miles (4 km) westerly from Point No Point. Prior to June, 2014, when Pleasure Beach re-opened, the area was Connecticut's largest and most recent ghost town after it was abandoned in the late 1990s due to a fire on the bridge connecting it to the mainland. It is surrounded on three sides by water.
Eileen DeSandre is an American stage actor and a member of the Actors' Equity Association. Known for much of her career as a character actor in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, she has more recently taken lead roles in a variety of theaters. She has an M.F.A. in acting from Pennsylvania State University, and a B.A. in French and theater from Seton Hill University.
Production history of plays performed by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, as of September 2021.
Christopher Rawson, is an American writer, university teacher and theater critic.
Mark Lamos is an American theatre and opera director, producer and actor. Under his direction, Hartford Stage won the 1989 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre and he has been nominated for two other Tonys. For more than 15 seasons, he has been artistic director of the Westport Country Playhouse. In May 2023, he announced he will leave the post in January 2024.
Jack Landau was an American stage and television director.
California Shakespeare Theater is a regional theater located in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Its performance space, the Lt. G. H. Bruns III Memorial Amphitheater, is located in Orinda, while the administrative offices, rehearsal hall, costume and prop shop are located in Berkeley.
A Shakespeare festival is a theatre organization that stages the works of William Shakespeare continually.
Terrence Scammell is a British stage and television actor. In his early career, he performed extensively at the renowned American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, including a starring role as Romeo in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. He was also a founder and artistic director of the Los Angeles Free Shakespeare Festival.
Darko Tresnjak is a director of plays, musicals, and opera, and winner of several awards, including the Tony Award. He was the artistic director of the Hartford Stage in Connecticut, United States.
James Bundy is an American theatre director and teacher who has served as Dean of Yale School of Drama and Artistic Director of Yale Repertory Theatre since 2002.
Bernard Gersten was an American theatrical producer. Beginning in the 1960s through the early 2000s, Gersten played a major role in shaping American drama and musical theatre.
Nafe Edmund Katter was a stage actor and director who taught theatre at the University of Connecticut from 1957 to 1997. In 2000, Katter donated $1 million to build the 241-seat Nafe Katter Theatre, which opened in 2004 on UConn's campus in Storrs.
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