Shakespeare & Company (Massachusetts)
Shakespeare & Company is an American theatre company and venue complex located in Lenox, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts. It was founded in 1978 by artistic director Tina Packer. The company performs plays by Shakespeare and new plays of "social and political significance", reaching over 75,000 patrons annually. It also conducts training programs for professional classical actors as well as education programs for elementary through high school students, the latter reaching over 50,000 students annually. Until 2001, Shakespeare & Company was based at The Mount, Edith Wharton's historic property in Lenox. As of 2023, its campus in Lenox consists of two indoor and three outdoor performance spaces, as well as three indoor studios. Packer stepped down as director in 2009; as of 2023, Allyn Burrows is the artistic director, while Henry Baker is the president. Other significant members have included Kristin Linklater, a founding member who left the company in the mid-1990s. Each fall since 1988, the education department of Shakespeare & Company hosts The Fall Festival of Shakespeare, a non-competitive program for high schoolers. Teaching artists and technicians from the company work with students at ten high schools throughout western and central Massachusetts and the Capital District of New York to create 90-minute performances of Shakespeare plays. Each school has performances at its own venue, then all the plays are performed the weekend before Thanksgiving in Lenox. Karen Allen Lauren Ambrose Gillian Barge Alicia Coppola Rebecca De Mornay Richard Dreyfuss Olympia Dukakis Peter Firth Christine Lahti Hamish Linklater Andie MacDowell Fred Melamed Joe Morton Bill Murray Jeffrey Pierce Bronson Pinchot Oliver Platt Diana Quick Keanu Reeves Jennifer Rubin Alicia Silverstone Anna Deavere Smith John Douglas Thompson Courtney Vance Sigourney Weaver Finn Wittrock Official website New York Times review Harvard School of Education, Project Zero Study