Shakespeare theater exits the stage after 17 years
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances.
We cite these lines from “As You Like It” in commemoration of the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, which after 17 years of staging highly professional and imaginative renditions of The Bard’s classics, has called it quits.
“The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival has played a leading role in the growth and vitality of the local theater scene,” Peter Toran, board president, said in a terse statement announcing the troupe’s closure, effective immediately.
According to The Baltimore Sun, financial problems have dogged the small company for years, culminating in a $1 million gift – intended as a long-term endowment – that was depleted to pay for regular operating expenses.
“We had to use our endowment to break even,” Toran told The Sun yesterday. “That money ended up being part of our operating budget, and that is not acceptable. Now, it’s all gone. Basically, we have just enough left to allow us to close.”
Performing during the summer months at the Evergreen House Meadows on North Charles Street, the BSF’s highlight was a Shakespeare production performed entirely by children.
An undated photo of a Baltimore Shakespeare Festival's children's performance. (BSF)
The Teen Performance Program began in 2003 with a production of “Macbeth” and included such classics as “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” “The Comedy of Errors,” “Hamlet” and “The Tempest.”
BSF’s demise reduces the number of professional Actors’ Equity companies in Baltimore to two: Center Stage and Everyman Theatre.