What We Do
Photo of Sara Topham and Dion Johnstone in the 2015 Free For All production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Scott Suchman.
Shakespeare Theatre Company creates world-class Shakespeare productions and innovative contemporary work, addressing the most urgent questions with scale and audacity.
Shakespeare inspires us to see ourselves better. A statue comes to life; a youngest daughter brings down a king; a prince finds wisdom in the skull of a fool. Shakespeare evokes our common humanity with images engraved on our hearts. Across two stages—Harman Hall and the Klein Theatre—and in hundreds of classrooms across the nation, STC is a learning space where different generations gather, unified by a shared curiosity about our time together on earth and the power of great stories to make a difference.
STC's mission is grounded in four pillars of meaning: Theatre, Shakespeare, Audacity & Vitality, and Community & Empathy. We tell stories that are Shakespearean in the deepest sense, even if (and especially when) they are not written by our house dramatist. We create impactful work on and off the stage, aimed at showcasing the common threads that bind us all.Theatre
Theatre is an event—a special event, an extraordinary event. Theatre is something people do together. Theatre is a search—every day—for the common threads that bind us all.Shakespeare
The work of our house dramatist has endured over the centuries because it has evolved over the centuries. Shakespeare’s stories, characters, and words continue to resonate, challenge, and evolve by burrowing their way into an audience’s imagination. These plays are like the theatre itself—spaces for endless and restless reinvention.Audacity and Vitality
Classical plays are realized best not by originalism but by walking the path Shakespeare himself followed, creating works that spoke to his own contemporary audience. A classical theatre that does not speak to the present moment is a museum. We tell vital stories in audacious forms. We tell stories that are Shakespearean in the deepest sense, even if (and especially when) they are not written by Shakespeare.Community and Empathy
Each show is an opportunity to build our community. The theatre is a place—one of our first places, one of our last places—where we are encouraged to inhabit the thoughts and feelings of people radically different from ourselves. By building empathy, we build community; by building community, we build empathy.