History
The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival began with an outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, performed under the stars at Manitoga, industrial designer Russell Wright's home in Garrison, New York. Melissa Stern, a professional actor and Garrison resident, 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. Stern produced Midsummer and O'Brien directed. The following year the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival was officially born. Boscobel, a Hudson River estate in Garrison, became the Festival's new site. Once in its new home and under the big tent, the Festival grew dramatically, from its first audience of 230 to over 39,000 in 2012. Twenty-seven years later, the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is a critically-acclaimed
Specialties
The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is dedicated to producing the plays of Shakespeare with an economy of style that focuses 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.