Mainstage Production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

25 years ago, the fledgling Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival committee was preparing for the inaugural season that would begin with A Midsummer Night's Dream. Now, as we look towards the next 25 years, the festival again turns to this classic comedy. Join us, Oberon, Titania, Hermia, Helen, Lysander, Demetrius, and of course Puck and Bottom, and the rest of the villagers, fairies, and mechanicals as we come together again to see Theseus marry Hippolyta, and to be swept off into the forest to watch the foolish mortals. 

Bard to Go: Tossing on the Ocean

Bard to Go is the Shakespeare festival’s touring production, a 50-minute program of scenes which gives students a lively, accessible introduction to Shakespeare in performance, available for performance at your school.  This year’s program, Bard to Go: Tossing on the Ocean, takes the audience on a sea-faring journey with Prospero, a powerful magician, and his assistant Ariel, a magical spirit with strange powers.  When Prospero and Ariel conjure a storm to shipwreck Prospero’s enemies, their magic spills over from their own play, The Tempest, and causes havoc for many of Shakespeare’s characters.  This production includes scenes from The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Pericles, The Comedy of Errors, and The Merchant of Venice.

Special 25th Retrospective Video

Festival alum Mike Harthen edited this video for our 25th anniversary with voice work provided by festival alum Erin Courtney Harthen. Thanks for the great work Mike and Erin!

Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival Conference

The biennial Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival Conference: Pedagogy and Performance will be held this fall with its special 25th anniversary theme, “My Crown is in My Heart, Not on My Head” –3 Henry VI 3.1.

The conference will feature Keynote speaker Michael LoMonico,  the Senior Consultant on National Education for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. He will also be the Resident Shakespeare Scholar.

His Keynote address to the conference on Friday, September 28 will be free and open to the public. He will also be giving a teaching workshop open to those who register for the conference, and he will also be visiting select Grand Valley classes while he is here. 

Public Keynote Address
Friday, September 28 at 4:30 P.M.
Pere Marquette Room, Russel H. Kirkhof Center,
Allendale Campus

Festival Alumni Picnic!!

The Shakespeare Festival is hosting a special Alumni Picnic for all festival alumni on Sunday, October 7 at the Grand Ravines Lodge of the Grand Ravines Park, just south of the Grand Valley Allendale Campus.

The picnic is from 11-1:30. Additionally, festival alumni can get tickets to King Lear for the special anniversary price of $5, the cost of tickets for students when the festival opened. Alumni are encouraged to attend the Sunday, October 7 matinee in conjunction with the picnic, and we have a special offer of babysitting for that performance. Contact the box office to make reservations for the picnic, for King Lear, and for the evening performance of Defy the Stars. See the flyer for more details. 

Picnic Invite

Festival Greenshow

Our Festival Greenshow will be cast in September and will feature a new production that will perform for Family Weekend and the Grand Valley Renaissance Faire as well as at the Festival Conference and a public performance on Thursday, October 4. Details and audition information to follow. 

Newsletter Now Available

The Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival annual Newsletter has been printed and distributed. It is available here as a PDF to download and enjoy. 

With heavy hearts, we say goodbye to one of our own, Jake Jager, who passed away on March 3, 2018. Jake has been a pillar of our theatre program since beginning at Grand Valley in fall 2013. He happily stepped onto our stage into a role in Much Ado About Nothing to fill a role in need of an actor. Once on the stage, he was rarely off. As one of our most prolific performers, it is most fitting that Jake helped christen the new Linn Maxwell Keller Black Box Theatre playing the Emcee in Cabaret. Beyond the boards, Jake was also a leader in the classroom and among the students. He was an active part of Alpha Psi Omega, the National Theatre Honor Society, serving in a variety of roles for the Grand Valley Chapter, including as president. At times in fall 2017 it took all he had to take the stage as one of the Ariel's in Tempest and to sing "Willkommen" in Cabaret, but that's what he loved and where he shined as a brilliant shooting star. 

Bio from The Tempest program. 
Jake Jager (Ariel 1) is a senior theatre major with minors in music and advertising and public relations. He is also a Shakespeare Scholarship recipient and Secretary and past President of APO. He has appeared previously at Grand Valley as Launce, Autolycus, Jaques in Bard to Go: Witty fools and Foolish Wits, Dromio of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors, and Antonio in Much Ado About Nothing, all for the Shakespeare Festival, Tobias in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, David in Company, and Dad in Sex and the Supernatural. He has also appeared as Ruben in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Sancho in The Man of La Mancha for Shadblow Theatre. In addition, he served as promotions and sponsorship for Beauty and the Beast, Noises Off, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for Shadblow Theatre where he also serves as an Advisory board member from 2016 season - present.

Visit Theatre at Grand Valley Site to view 2017-2018 Season

Visit the Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance Website

Visit the English Department Site

Member: Shakespeare Theatre Association, Theatre Alliance of Michigan. All shows are associate entries in the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival  

Hurricane Relief

During rehearsals and development for The Tempest, the U.S. and islands of the Caribbean were struck by the powerful hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. As a festival, we were struck by the vivid reality of such storms, and we could not perform a play called The Tempest without acknowledging these storms and the devastation, suffering, and grief they brought. In response, the Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival donated 5 percent of all ticket revenue from The Tempest to the Red Cross for hurricane relief.