The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival was a small nonprofit theatre that produced plays by or about Shakespeare in Baltimore, Maryland. It also had an educational program that introduced school children to Shakespeare. The company existed, in different forms, from 1994 to 2010.
History
The first production of BSF was A Midsummer Night's Dream which was performed at The Cloisters in Lutherville, Maryland in 1994. The company was founded by Kelley Dunn-Feliz and Richard Feliz that same year. In its early years, the Festival often faced financial instability, scaled back on its productions and went through several management changes.
In 2003, the festival moved to a permanent indoor space within the St Mary's Community Center in the Hampden neighborhood of North Baltimore.
The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival closed its doors for good in 2011. The Board of Trustees made a simple public pronouncement of the difficulty of producing live theater and announced it was closing its doors due to economic challenges. The company did not maintain any archives.