Welcome to the Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival
Current Season
Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival's 25th Anniversary Season A Silver Coronation: The Grand Valley Shakespeare Effect is coming this fall.
This special season will be filled with many exciting events and celebrations.
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King Lear
Our Mainstage 25th production, as voted by our audience in 2016!
Ready to “shake off the cares and business from our age,” King Lear stages a love test with his three daughters to give away his kingdom to the one who loves him most. What results is the breaking of family bonds and unleashing of tragic forces in the kingdom as Lear confronts the nature of human existence: love and loss, power and futility, pride and humility, and good and evil. The production features the return of guest actor Brian Webb, who played Paroles in the 2015 production of All’s Well That Ends Well and Richard III in the 2012 production of Richard III.
Directed by Karen Libman
September 28-October 7
Teachers Special Student Matinees Oct 1, 2, and 4. Click for more information and registration
Sign Language Interpretation available
King Lear Teaser
The 25th Silver Anniversary Production of King Lear directed by Karen Libman and starring Brian Webb Russell. Photography by Rick Malkin. Music "A Knell” by Robert Johnson (c. 1583 – 1633). performed and arranged by Pablo Mahave-Veglia. Video editing by Mallory Caillaud-Jones
Purchase Your Tickets Here!
Click on the image to purchase ticket!
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
Conference details can be found at the conference site at http://www.gvsu.edu/shakesconference/
2018 Resident Scholar
and Conference Keynote
Michael LoMonico of the Folger Library
Bard To Go Twelfth Night
Bard to Go returns with an all-new, 50-minute version of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night for its 2018 schools tour.
Featuring six actors playing multiple roles and covering the complete play, this fast-paced, lively production presents to students the classic love triangle of disguised Viola, lovesick Orsino, and grieving Olivia in one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies.
Free public performances
September 29 and October 6, noon and 1 p.m.
ArtPrize entry, L.V. Eberhard Center, near the Blue Bridge
November 3 at 1 p.m.
Loosemore Auditorium
Robert C. Pew Grand Rapids Campus
Secondary School tour
October 12, 19, 26 and November 2
Schools: Click Here for School Performance Information and scheduling
Alumni Production of a NEW PLAY!!
As a new event to celebrate 25 years of the Shakespeare Festival, we welcome back alumni from our seasons. Alumnus Scott Watson is finishing a new play, titled Defy the Stars, which will be performed as part of the 25th season. The play follows two actors being held at the Westerbork Transit Camp in the Netherlands in July 1942. In order to save themselves and others from deportation to Auschwitz, these actors stage a production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Watson graduated from Grand Valley in 2009 with a B.A. in theatre and currently works as an actor and playwright in New York City.
Thanks to the generous support of The Wesselink Family Foundation, the Joseph Stevens Freedom Endowment, and the Grand Valley Department of Political Science, we are able to perform Defy the Stars as a complex staged reading for three performances, with a full cast, and some production values. The production is staged by alumnus director Jason Flannery and features an all alumni cast and production staff.
Alumni who are interested in being involved in the production should watch for news announcements on this website, watch the Festival Facebook page, and email Katherine Mayberry at maybekat@gvsu.edu for questions.
Performances are free and open to the public and will take place in the new Linn Maxwell Keller Black Box Theatre in the Thomas J. and Marcia J. Haas Center for Performing Arts.
- Wednesday, October 3 and Sunday October 7 at 7:30 p.m.
- Saturday, October 6 at 2 p.m.
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.
Alumni Picnic at Grand Ravines North Park
The Lodge at Grand Ravines North Park, just south of the Allendale Campus
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.
2017-18 Annual Newsletter
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.
Remembering Jacob Owen Jager, Jake
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 "Wilkomen" in Cabaret, but that's what he loved and where he shined as a brilliant shooting star.
JULY 6, 1994 ~ MARCH 3, 2018
My Ariel, chick,
That is thy charge: then to the elements
Be free, and fare thou well!
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.
Antonio in 2013 Much Ado About Nothing
Dromio of Syracuse in
2014 The Comedy of Errors.
Jake received the Irene Ryan Nomination from KC/ACTF for his performance.
Autolycus in Bard to Go:Witty Fools and Foolish Wits 2015
Ariel in 2017 The Tempest
Jake at the opening night reception of the 2013 Production of Much Ado About Nothing, the festival's 20th season production. Jake was the first student actor in a festival production who was younger than the festival itself.
Emcee in 2017 Cabaret, the inaugural production in the Linn Maxwell Keller Black Box Theatre.
Jake graduated from Grand Valley in a special ceremony in February 2018 in the Keller Black Box, fittingly onstage, where he always gave his best.
Donations to recognize Jake’s life and legacy may be made to the Jake Jager Memorial Scholarship at GVSU; the Pediatric Oncology Resource Team (PORT) at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital to support those that provided him care over the past six years; or to spread happiness, to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of West Michigan who made a dream of his come true.
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
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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.