American Shakespeare Center

Shenandoah Shakespeare EXPRESS

The American Shakespeare Center was founded as the Shenandoah Shakespeare EXPRESS in 1988 by Dr. Ralph Alan Cohen and Jim Warren. The first show performed by the newly organized company was Richard III, where actors who made up the locally travelling ensemble troupe came from James Madison University current students and graduates, and the performance was two hours long (compared to a more typical three hour plus run time).

In 1990, the company started performing multiple shows in rotating repertory with a season of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Julius Caesar. Shenandoah Shakespeare Express grew quickly during its first five years, moving from a single touring show in Virginia in 1988 to a three-show tour in 1992 that included the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., and an overseas leg in London and Edinburgh. Three years later, the company toured the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, and Scotland as well as starting to build the Education arm of the company with a six-week National Endowment for the Humanities institute.

In 1997, the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express introduced the Young Company Theatre Camp, a three-week intensive summer program for high school students.

Shenandoah Shakespeare

Shenandoah Shakespeare Express changed its name to Shenandoah Shakespeare in 1999 and moved to Staunton, Virginia.

In September 2001, the Blackfriars Playhouse - the world's only re-creation of Shakespeare's indoor theatre - opened in Staunton, Virginia and ASC Education hosted its first Blackfriars Conference.

American Shakespeare Center

In 2005, Shenandoah Shakespeare changed its name to the American Shakespeare Center to reflect its focus on being a center for performance and research. Also in 2005, the first Actors' Renaissance Season debuted. The Actors' Renaissance Season uses Shakespeare's rehearsal conditions (self-directed, self-designed, short rehearsal period) as well as his staging conditions to delve deeper into the plays. The Actors' Renaissance Season is also an opportunity to explore rarer titles of the early modern period.

In 2005, the Bob Carlton musical, Return to the Forbidden Planet, which was loosely based on Shakespeare's The Tempest and the science-fiction classic movie from the late 1950s, Forbidden Planet, was produced by the touring company, then called the Blackfriars Stage Company. The performances incorporated acoustic music, a piano, and a three-sided thrust stage, all of which were selected to maximize audience engagement.

The American Shakespeare Center celebrated its 25th Anniversary in 2013.

Blackfriars Playhouse

In Staunton, the ASC constructed the Blackfriars Playhouse, the first modern re-creation of Shakespeare's original indoor theatre, the Blackfriars Theatre. As no reliable plans of that theatre are known, architect Tom McLaughlin based the design on plans for other 17th-century theatres, his own trips to England to view surviving halls of the period, Shakespeare's stage directions and other research and consultation. The chosen dimensions of 50 feet (15 m) by 70 feet (21 m) were derived from the research of theatre historian Irwin Smith.

Construction began on the playhouse in early 2000, as part of a three-building construction plan that would also include a re-creation of the 1614 Globe Theatre and a Center for Research and Education. The theater was built with timber sourced by Dreaming Creek.

The playhouse was completed at a cost of $3.7 million, and opened in September 2001. Built inside a brick shell, it is a wood-pegged, post-and-beam structure, made of Virginia oak, with a hammerbeam roof. The seating capacity is 300. Raked benches in a pit and two levels of galleries place the audience close to the actors, and even seating on the stage is possible. Unlike the original Blackfriars, the theatre has no painted decorations except at the back of the stage, and no windows in the auditorium. Electrical lighting reflected off the ceiling is used to simulate daylight, and lights simulating candles are mounted on sconces, and on wrought-iron chandeliers.

In 2012, the Blackfriars Playhouse appeared in BBC's documentary Shakespeare Uncovered, which aired in the U.S. in early 2013.

Shakespeare's staging conditions

The American Shakespeare Center gives its audiences some of the same experiences that an Elizabethan playgoer would have enjoyed by following the basic principles of Renaissance theatrical production - including Universal Lighting (audience and actors share the same pool of light), Doubling (one actor playing multiple roles in a show), cross-gender casting (men playing female characters and vice versa), and minimal sets.

Productions

For resident theatre companies, according to Zelda Fichandler, "repertory is destiny" - a theatre company acquires its audience by the productions it presents. Most of the production at the American Shakespeare Center's are from Shakespeare's canon; however, each year several productions are works by his contemporary playwrights or more modern plays that relate directly to the Shakespeare canon or work well using Shakespeare's staging conditions.

Educational Programming

ASC Education offers workshops, performances, staged readings, lectures, a bienniel international conference, teacher training, archival materials for scholarly research, and summer programs for teens and adults.

Mary Baldwin College

The ASC partners with Mary Baldwin College in the one-of-a-kind MLitt/MFA Shakespeare and Performance graduate program for actors, directors, teachers, and dramaturgs. The program's graduates have gone on to doctoral work, tenure-track faculty positions, and professional theatre careers.

Organization

Administration

Advisory Board

Honors

On September 12, 2013, the Staunton, Virginia City Council passed a resolution honoring the 25th Anniversary of the American Shakespeare Center, acknowledging its growth from a touring troupe performing Richard III fourteen times in rural Virginia into an international Shakespeare center that has: