American Shakespeare Center

Regional theatre company located in Staunton, Virginia, focusing on Shakespeare

The American Shakespeare Center (ASC) is a regional theatre company located in Staunton, Virginia, that focuses on the plays of William Shakespeare; his contemporaries Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Christopher Marlowe; and works related to Shakespeare, like James Goldman's The Lion in Winter and Bob Carlton's Return to the Forbidden Planet. The ASC is notable for its theatre, the Blackfriars Playhouse, the world's first recreation of the original indoor Blackfriars Theatre in London that was demolished in 1655. As a theater company, the ASC hosts performances by two rotating ensembles of 16 different titles in 5 distinct seasons, 52 weeks a year, at its Blackfriars Playhouse, as well as hosting a regional travelling company, ASC on Tour. The ASC also provides a year round laboratory for students and scholars through education programming in Staunton and on the road.

The American Shakespeare Center was founded as the Shenandoah Shakespeare EXPRESS in 1988 by Dr. Ralph Alan Cohen and Jim Warren. The first show performed by the newly organized company was Richard III, where actors who made up the locally travelling ensemble troupe came from James Madison University's current students and graduates, and the performance was two hours long (compared to a more typical three hour plus run time). In 1990, the company started performing multiple shows in rotating repertory with a season of A Midsummer Night's Dream and Julius Caesar. Shenandoah Shakespeare Express grew quickly during its first five years, moving from a single touring show in Virginia in 1988 to a three show tour in 1992 that included the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D. C., and an overseas leg in London and Edinburgh. Three years later, the company toured the U. S., Canada, France, Germany, and Scotland as well as starting to build the Education arm of the company with a six week National Endowment for the Humanities institute. In 1997, the Shenandoah Shakespeare Express introduced the Young Company Theatre Camp, a three week intensive summer program for high school students. Currently known as the ASC Theatre Camp.

Shenandoah Shakespeare Express changed its name to Shenandoah Shakespeare in 1999 and moved to Staunton, Virginia. In September 2001, the Blackfriars Playhouse – the world's first re creation of Shakespeare's indoor theatre – opened in Staunton, Virginia and ASC Education hosted its first Blackfriars Conference. In 2014, another replica of the Blackfriars theatre, called the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, was opened in London.

In Staunton, the ASC constructed the Blackfriars Playhouse, the first modern re creation of Shakespeare's original indoor theatre, the Blackfriars Theatre. As no reliable plans of that theatre are known, architect Tom McLaughlin based the design on plans for other 17th century theatres, his own trips to England to view surviving halls of the period, Shakespeare's stage directions and other research and consultation. The chosen dimensions of 50 feet (15 m) by 70 feet (21 m) were derived from the research of theatre historian Irwin Smith. Construction began on the playhouse in early 2000, as part of a three building construction plan that would also include a re creation of the 1614 Globe Theatre and a Center for Research and Education. The theater was built with timber sourced by Dreaming Creek. The playhouse was completed at a cost of $3.7 million, and opened in September 2001. In 2012, the Blackfriars Playhouse appeared in BBC's documentary Shakespeare Uncovered, which aired in the U. S. in early 2013.

The American Shakespeare Center gives its audiences some of the same experiences that an Elizabethan playgoer would have enjoyed by following the basic principles of Renaissance theatrical production including Universal Lighting (audience and actors share the same pool of light), Doubling (one actor playing multiple roles in a show), cross gender casting (men playing female characters and vice versa), and minimal sets. Most of the productions at the American Shakespeare Center's are from Shakespeare's canon; however, each year several productions are works by his contemporary playwrights or more modern plays that relate directly to the Shakespeare canon or work well using Shakespeare's staging conditions.

ASC Education offers workshops, performances, staged readings, lectures, a biennial international conference, teacher training, archival materials for scholarly research, and summer programs for teens and adults.

The ASC is in partnership with Mary Baldwin University in the one of a kind MLitt/MFA Shakespeare and Performance graduate program for actors, directors, teachers, and dramaturgs. The program's graduates have gone on to doctoral work, tenure track faculty positions, and professional theatre careers.