Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival celebrates 25th anniversary with "silver coronation" events

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 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 September 28-November 3.

In 1992, President Emeritus Arend D. Lubbers visited a Shakespeare Festival at the University of Colorado. Following that positive experience, he decided that adding more of a Shakespearean presence to Grand Valley would be beneficial to faculty, students, and the broader community.

In 1993, Lubbers turned to Ivo Soljan, professor of English and notable Shakespeare scholar, to create the “Shakespeare Society.”

After a series of successful events, Soljan teamed with Roger Ellis, professor of theater, and Laura Salazar, professor emerita of theater, to expand the society into the Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival in 1994.

The goal of the festival was to involve the entire campus community. Over the years, this has been accomplished through various events, including a mainstage production, a student competition, a biannual Shakespeare conference, involvement by guest artists and Grand Valley alumni, and performances 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 Jim Bell, Shakespeare Festival managing director. “Times change, but thoughts about life still often involve those areas of life that Shakespeare’s plays and characters contemplate, confront and challenge.”

While the Shakespeare Festival’s presence is certainly felt at Grand Valley, the impact of the event extends beyond campus.

More than 30,000 middle and high school students have visited Grand Valley to enjoy 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. The production will feature the return of guest actor Brian Webb Russell, who played roles in the 2011 and 2015 mainstage productions.

For schools lacking the means to send their students to watch the annual production, Bard to Go travels to numerous Grand Rapids area schools to perform 50-minute plays, and also offers at least one public performance each year.

Special to the 25th anniversary of the festival will be the staged reading by festival alumni of a commissioned Shakespeare-based 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.

Currently acting professionally in New York City, Watson, '09, said that he felt honored when asked by Grand Valley faculty to write something specifically for the festival.

“It’s been a wonderful driving force to create something special,” said Watson. “Theater is always magic and writing the play is always the beginning, so I can’t wait to learn more about the play through the talents of the actors, producers and creative team members who will help bring it to life.”

Below is the full schedule of Shakespeare Festival events. All events are free and open to the public, except performances of “King Lear” and the Shakespeare Festival Conference. Contact the Louis Armstrong Box Office at (616) 331-2300 for ticket information. For all event information, visit the Shakespeare Festival website.

“King Lear”
September 28-October 7
Louis Armstrong Theatre, Thomas J. and Marcia J. Haas Center for Performing Arts, Allendale Campus

Biannual Performance and Pedagogy Conference — “My Crown is My Heart, Not on my Head”
September 27-September 29
Haas Center
*Keynote presentation (free and open to the public) by Michael LoMonico, Resident Shakespeare Scholar, will take place September 28 at 4:30 p.m. in the Kirkhof Center’s Pere Marquette Room

“Defy the Stars” Staged Reading
October 3, 6, and 7
Linn Maxwell Keller Black Box Theatre, Haas Center

Bard to Go: Twelfth Night
September 29 and October 7 during ArtPrize (as an official time-based entry) outside Eberhard Center, at noon and 1 p.m.
November 3, at 1 p.m., Loosemore Auditorium, DeVos Center, Pew Grand Rapids Campus