By Matthew Makowski
The Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival is the oldest and largest festival celebrating the Bard’s life and works in Michigan. For the past 25 years, festival events have attracted thousands of people of all ages to Grand Valley State University to enjoy the legacy of Shakespeare.
The Grand Valley community will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the festival with “A Silver Coronation: The Grand Valley Shakespeare Effect” — a series of events taking place through Nov. 3.
Shakespeare Festival Managing Director Jim Bell said the goal of the festival is to involve both the Grand Valley and West Michigan communities, as well as communities around the world. Over the years, this has been accomplished through various events, including a mainstage production, performances abroad, a biannual Shakespeare conference, involvement by guest artists and alumni, and outreach performances at local schools by Bard to Go, Grand Valley’s all-student touring Shakespeare company.
“Participating in the festival means the opportunity to enter the laboratory of live theater performance to experience the world’s greatest storyteller and humanity’s greatest spokesman in the arena where he is best understood,” said Bell. “Times change, but thoughts about life still often involve those areas of life that Shakespeare’s plays and characters contemplate, confront and challenge.”
More than 30,000 middle and high school students have visited Grand Valley to experience the mainstage production since the festival’s inception. This year, audiences of all ages will experience “King Lear” — a tale of a retiring king who determines through a series of tests of love how to divide his kingdom among his three daughters.
Special to the 25th anniversary of the festival will be the staged reading by festival alumni of a commissioned play by Grand Valley alumnus Scott Watson called “Defy the Stars.”
Based on true events, the play follows two actors who are held at the Westerbork Transit Camp in 1942. The actors perform “Romeo and Juliet” to save themselves and others from deportation to Auschwitz.
Below is the full schedule of Shakespeare Festival events. All events are free and open to the public, except performances of “King Lear.” Contact the Louis Armstrong Box Office at (616) 331-2300 for additional ticket information. For all event information, visit the Shakespeare Festival website.
“King Lear”
Thru Oct. 7
Louis Armstrong Theatre, Thomas J. and Marcia J. Haas Center for Performing Arts, Allendale Campus
“Defy the Stars”
Oct. 3, 6, and 7
Linn Maxwell Keller Black Box Theatre, Haas Center, Allendale Campus
Bard to Go: Twelfth Night
Oct. 7 during ArtPrize as an official time-based entry outside Eberhard Center, at noon and 1 p.m.
Nov. 3, at 1 p.m., Loosemore Auditorium, DeVos Center, Pew Grand Rapids Campus
