The 2011-12 season was record-setting for TSC in numbers of productions, performances, educational offerings, co-productions, box office, and numbers of students and patrons served.
The season featured Macbeth and The Tempest outdoors at Shelby Farms Park, Southern Yuletide (Truman Capote and O. Henry) and The Glass Menagerie at Dixon Gallery & Gardens, schools tours of Romeo and Juliet and The Rebel Shakespeare and His Women, and the Third Annual Valentine's Gala featuring Broadway composer Charles Strouse at GPAC.
Additionally, TSC's education program continues to grow at twice its projected pace in Memphis and across the Mid-South. In June, TSC recorded its 100,000th non-unique student interaction across five years. More than 70 County, City, private, and home schools have participated with TSC through Free Will Kids' Nights, Morning Matinees, in-school playshops, free interactive Study Guides, touring productions, co-productions, the Prelude Scene Program, and in-school residencies.
TSC also doubled its programming, increased the budget by 60%, performed for its 20,000th patron within the try-state area, had a $1.8 million economic impact on the Memphis community, and re-created a formerly derelict outdoor amphitheater at Shelby Farms Park.
Tennessee Shakespeare Company is the Mid-South's professional, classical theatre and education organization which performs the plays of William Shakespeare outdoors and indoors; provides year-round educational and training programming; will perform classical and Southern writers seasonally indoors; as well as produce a Southern-centric New Play Festival, "Southern Exposure."
As You Like It, 2008
A 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization founded in Germantown, Tennessee Shakespeare Company's vision is to sustain a classical theatre that both nurtures artists and encourages audiences to exaltation, curiosity, and wonderment; a center for the community dedicated to re-discovering our faith in life by increasing our awareness of reality and expanding our imagination through an emphasis on the performance, education, and training of William Shakespeare's works.
The creation of native Memphians Dan McCleary (Artistic Director) and national Disney Teacher of the Year, E. Frank Bluestein (Executive Director), Tennessee Shakespeare Company is in the midst of its third performance season which has included Othello in the fall and will feature its inaugural Mid-South touring production of Romeo and Juliet this spring in area schools and outdoors at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens.
Dan is the former Associate Artistic Director, artist-manager, and Director of Marketing and Development at Shakespeare & Company in the Berkshires. In 2006 he began scouting sites in the southern U.S. to establish a new classical theatre and education organization, and he chose his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee.
In addition to Mr. Bluestein, Dan was joined by the City of Germantown, Father Gary Sturni of St. George's Episcopal Church, and Mrs. Barbara B. Apperson in making the preparation year possible. TSC was incorporated in February 2008 with a founding Board of Directors that remains to this day.
Since then, TSC has grown into a $473,000 theatre and education organization that has performed As You Like It inside St. George's Church and outdoors in Mrs. Apperson's Forest of Arden, an all-female Julius Caesar in Germantown City Hall, A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Poplar Pike Playhouse, Othello inside St. George's, and Themes from a Midsummer Night (in collaboration with IRIS Orchestra) at Germantown Performing Arts Centre, all seen by nearly 11,500 audience members.
Additionally, TSC's education program has grown at twice its projected pace, having served over 12,500 Mid-South school children from 46 County, City, private, and home schools with Free Will Morning Matiness, in-school playshops, free interactive Study Guides, and a growing number of in-school residencies.
TSC has had a $1.2 million economic impact on its community.
In addition to our extraordinary 19-member Board of Directors, TSC is supported by its 50-member Groundlings volunteer organization, founded and led by President Donna Ladd.