The Texas Shakespeare Festival is a professional summer theatre housed in the Anne Dean Turk Fine Arts Center on the campus of Kilgore College

Kilgore College

Kilgore College is a community college located in Kilgore, Texas. It has an annual enrollment of more than 5000 students.The school was established in 1935 at the height of the East Texas oil boom...

, Kilgore, Texas

Kilgore, Texas

Kilgore is a city in Gregg and Rusk Counties in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the home of Kilgore College, and was also the childhood home of famous classical pianist Van Cliburn...

. TSF presents four weeks of performances during late June and July of five productions in repertory

Repertory

Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...

: two plays by Shakespeare, a classic, a musical, and a children's show.

History

Established in 1986, the Texas Shakespeare Festival began as Kilgore College's contribution to the Texas Sesquicentennial celebration. The brainchild of Raymond Caldwell, a faculty member within the theatre program at Kilgore College and subsequent Artistic Director of the Festival, the first season of TSF consisted of two plays by Shakespeare and the The Daisy Bradford 3, a regional work commissioned for the celebration telling the story of the East Texas oil boom by Gifford Wingate, all performed by a small company of professional actors. The overwhelming popularity and quality of the summer theatre experience for the people of East Texas catapulted what was to have been a one-time event into an organization that is celebrating its second decade of performances.
More than 1000 theatre artists have worked at TSF including such well-known personalities as Michael C Hall (Six Feet Under; Dexter); Danny Pino (Cold Case); Glenn Fleshler (Spring Awakening; Guys and Dolls); Rick Holmes (Spamalot); Andrew Samonsky (South Pacific"; "Tick, Tick, Boom!); Glenn Kessler (Creator, Producer, Director and Actor for Damages); and Keythe Farley (co-author, Batboy, The Musical.)

The Texas Shakespeare Festival is listed as a Major Festival in the book Shakespeare Festivals Around the World by Marcus D. Gregio (Editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

), 2004.

Productions

In more than twenty years, the Texas Shakespeare Festival has produced twenty-nine plays of Shakespeare’s canon, as well as multiple American and European classics, original works, numerous musicals, and very successful shows for young audiences. Their work with young audience led to them being awarded a grant in 2005 to further support youth activities. The Festival continues to audition and employ professional directors, actors, designers, and technicians, as well as giving many university students from all across America their first summer theatre experience. The Festival has attracted a range of attention throughout its more than two-decades of performances. In 1999 a production of Angels in America produced by the Kilgore College Theatre Department and directed by Caldwell, led to death threats, anti-gay

LGBT rights opposition

LGBT rights opposition refers to active opposition to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender civil rights. Organizations influential in LGBT rights opposition frequently challenge judicial rulings, and legislative initiatives, and dispute findings that sexual orientation is an immutable...

 protests and a withdrawal of more than $50,000 in funding by the Gregg County Commissioners. Subsequently, however, the Festival received grants from both Paul Newman

Paul Newman

Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...

's Own PEN Center, the Dramatists Guild of America, and other sympathetic sources nationwide.

Support

Kilgore College provides the majority of the funding for the Festival, and provides a range of other support for the festival including: rehearsal facilities, office spaces, the Van Cliburn

Van Cliburn

Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn Jr. is an American pianist who achieved worldwide recognition in 1958 at age 23, when he won the first quadrennial International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, at the height of the Cold War....

 Auditorium, dormitory housing and meals for the entire company, scholarships for the apprentices, printing, publicity and public relations. Additional grants and foundations enable the Texas Shakespeare Festival to continue as a strong and vital cultural asset and tourist attraction for all of East Texas

East Texas

East Texas is a distinct geographic and ecological area in the U.S. state of Texas.According to the Handbook of Texas, the East Texas area "may be separated from the rest of Texas roughly by a line extending from the Red River in north central Lamar County southwestward to east central Limestone...

. The Festival is also credited as bringing a degree of sophistication in the arts world to East Texas. In return, the Festival supports the college with grant funding to help refurbish the auditorium in which it performs.