Кливленд қаласындағы «Ұлы көлдер» театры

Theater company in Cleveland, Ohio, U. S.

Great Lakes Theater, originally known as the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, is a professional classic theater company in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1962, Great Lakes is the second largest regional theater in Northeast Ohio. It specializes in large cast classic plays with a strong foundation in the works of Shakespeare and features an educational outreach program. The company performs its main stage productions in rotating repertory at the Hanna Theatre in Playhouse Square, which reopened on September 20, 2008. The organization shares a resident company of artists with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. On its main stage and through its education programs, GLT connects approximately 85,000 adults and students to the classics each season. GLT's artistic directors have included Arthur Lithgow, Lawrence Carra, Vincent Dowling, Gerald Freedman, James Bundy and Charles Fee.

A professional regional theater, The Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival (GLTF), was launched in 1962 with a $50,000 budget (50000.0 in 1962 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years). Driven and supported by community members and volunteers at its inception, the theater continues to operate as a non profit with a $3.6 million annual operations budget. Later to become the first GLTF director, Arthur Lithgow directed Shakespeare Under the Stars, a professional summer theater troupe at Antioch College where he was a faculty member. Between 1952 and 1957, the troupe performed all of Shakespeare’s plays and began traveling across Northeastern Ohio to perform at Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, at an old movie theater in Cuyahoga Falls, and at the Toledo Zoo. By 1962, the troupe was seeking a space to perform permanently while, simultaneously, a group of citizens led by the Lakewood Board of Education president, Dorothy Teare, were seeking cultural activities to occupy the Lakewood Civic Auditorium during the summer months. Thus, the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival formed and premiered the first production, As You Like It, on July 11, 1962. It continued at the Lakewood Civic Auditorium that season and performed six of Shakespeare plays in rotation.

While the theater began staging Shakespeare productions exclusively, the repertoire expanded to other theatrical classics beginning in 1965. an historic district home to several 1920s venues. On September 20, 2008, GLTF relocated again to the newly renovated Hanna Theater, which is a 1921 building also located in Playhouse Square. An extensive fundraising campaign ($19.2 million) enabled renovations that maintained the Hanna's historic interiors but updated staging mechanisms as well as reducing seating to accommodate 550 audience members. The theater reached its goals for the renovation as well as securing an endowment that would support operations in years to come. In 2005, the GLTF won the Northern Ohio Live Magazine Award for Excellence in Theater and in 2006 won The Free Times Readers Choice Award for Best Performing Arts Group. "Festival" was eliminated from the title in 2011 to better reflect its September through May season and programming format. Having staged over 300 productions, the theater celebrated its 50th season in 2011 2012 and commemorated the milestone with a gala hosted at the InterContinental Hotel & Conference Center in April 2012. Other Academy Award winning alumni include Olympia Dukakis, recognized for her performance in the film Moonstruck (1987), Ruby Dee who won for her performance in the film American Gangster (2007), and Cloris Leachman best known for her roles in The Facts of Life and the Mary Tyler Moore Show. The theater's reputation and strong artistic direction attracted talented actors across the years. Lawrence Carra, a drama professor at Carnegie Mellon University, was the artistic director between 1966 and 1975, during which time he directed a contemporary production of Hamlet based on the shooting of Robert Kennedy. Dowling had been a veteran actor of the Dublin Abbey Theater prior to taking on this post and was quoted as saying that his primary goal was to provide a drama diet for the Ohio community. Increasing the theater's prestige, Freedman successfully attracted well known actors and directors to the GLTF stage, including: George Abbott, Jean Stapleton, Hal Holbrook, and Ruby Dee. Under his direction, GLSF changed its name to the "Great Lakes Theater Festival. During Bundy's direction the theater realized its most attended season to date in 2001, with 77,000 audience attendees. Under Fee's direction, the theater began partnerships with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, and the Playhouse Square Foundation. Fee inherited more than $1 million in debt, but by making savvy decisions, such as becoming a summer fall repertory theater, he has put the organization in strong financial standing.

The theater began as a citizen led endeavor to support community cultural engagement and maintains educational outreach as central to its mission today. Approximately 50,000 students in Northeast Ohio engage with the theater each year through student matinee series, school residency programs, surround programs (programs and workshops about productions,) writing contests, summer camps, and free community programming.