A Brief History

The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival began in 1987 with a modest outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream performed under the stars in a meadow at Manitoga, industrial designer Russell Wright's home in Garrison, New York, fifty miles north of Manhattan. Melissa Stern, a professional actor and a new resident of Garrison, had been approached by a Manitoga board member to create an outdoor theater project as a fundraiser for Manitoga. Stern contacted her former American Conservatory Theatre colleague, Terrence O'Brien, a member of the Twenty-Ninth Street Project, a group of professional theater artists in New York. The show was produced in cooperation with the Twenty-Ninth Street Project, which provided most of the actors, rehearsal space, and a non-profit umbrella. Stern produced Midsummer and O'Brien directed.

The modern dress show was virtually rained out of its four scheduled performances--except for the first two, which were given under wet drizzle. Patient audiences sat under their umbrellas on makeshift seats. After the second night the production moved to the local elementary school gym. Nevertheless, the show so enchanted those who saw it, including the late actress Helen Hayes and the Poughkeepsie Journal arts editor, that a group of fans gathered and became the Festival's organizing committee. The group grew in size and helped see the organization through its next stage of applying for non-profit status and incorporation. The following year the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival was officially born.

Boscobel, a Hudson River estate in Garrison, became the Festival's new site. It offered a magnificent setting, ample parking, grounds personnel and an established reputation as a tourist attraction. Once in its new home and under a big tent, the Festival grew dramatically, from its first audience of 230 to 28,000 in 2007.

Twenty-two years later, the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is a critically-acclaimed regional theater, attracting audiences from the tri-state area and beyond. Shakespeare scholars, critics and enthusiastic fans laud its spare, clear and compelling productions. In addition to its summer productions, the Festival sponsors year-round education programs, including Access-Shakespeare a fully staged touring production; Shakespeare Students on Stage, and Free Will, an artists-in-residence program which teaches over 17,000 students annually from elementary school through college; other programs include the summer Apprentice Program for a select group of college age actors seriously committed to learning the craft of theater, and the Teaching Shakespeare Summer Institute.

Our Statement of Purpose

The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is dedicated to producing the plays of Shakespeare with an economy of style that focuses its energy and resources on script, actors, and audience.

We communicate the stories with energy, clarity and invention and we distill rather than embellish the language and action. We challenge ourselves and our audiences to take a fresh look at what is essential in Shakespeare's plays.