The American Shakespeare Theatre was a theater company based in Stratford, Connecticut, United States. It was formed in the early 1950s by Lawrence Langner, Lincoln Kirstein, John Percy Burrell, and philanthropist Joseph Verner Reed.
- Venue
- American Shakespeare Theatre
- Town
- Stratford, US
The American Shakespeare Theatre was a theater company based in Stratford, Connecticut, United States. It was formed in the early 1950s by Lawrence Langner, Lincoln Kirstein, John Percy Burrell, and philanthropist Joseph Verner Reed. The American Shakespeare Festival Theatre was constructed and the program opened on July 12, 1955, with Julius Caesar. The theater building burned to the ground on January 13, 2019. Plays were produced at the Festival Theatre in Stratford from 1955 until the company ceased operations in the mid-1980s. The company focused on American interpretations of William Shakespeare's plays, but occasionally produced plays by other playwrights, including T.S. Eliot, Bernard Shaw, Sophocles, Giuseppe Verdi, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, and William Wycherley. The first artistic director was Denis Carey, who had managed The Old Vic in London. Under Carey's direction, the productions were not impressive financially or artistically. John Houseman took over as artistic director in 1956, and his associate director was Jack Landau. Houseman resigned his position in August 1959 and Landau was promoted one month later. In 1992, the Hartford Courant posted a history of productions at the theater, which was the home of the American Shakespeare Festival. The last full season of the festival was 1982. The last production on the theater stage was a one-person show of The Tempest in September 1989. Previous efforts had included plans to raise money to renovate the structure, as well as alternate plans to demolish it and construct an amphitheater in its place. Notable actors involved with the American Shakespeare Theatre included: One of seven crests donated by the Timex Corporation was stolen in March 2012. Each of the crests represented a different Shakespearean play. Timex had a long affiliation with the theater, starting with a donation of "the world's only properly calibrated sundial" in 1956. In 2013, beer manager Steven Bilodeau of Wines Unlimited an