Qualla: Shakespeare Theatre Company

Shakespeare Theatre Company: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dpyuenstc, CC BY-SA 4.0. Patrick Stewart was fourteen when he first imagined playing Othello. By the time he was old enough and famous enough to do it, the time when a white actor could put on blackface and play the Moor had passed. So Stewart pitched Michael Kahn, artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, on doing the play backwards: he would be the only white actor in an otherwise all-black cast. Stewart, the British knight best known to American audiences as Captain Picard, would play Othello as the racial outsider in an inverted Venice. Ron Canada would play Iago. The production opened at the Lansburgh Theatre in 1997. Stewart called it a way to make the audience reckon with the play's racism without retreating into safer territory. Most critics agreed. It was the kind of swing the Shakespeare Theatre Company had become known for.

Image: Dpyuenstc | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shakespeare Theatre Company: From the Folger to Penn Quarter

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dpyuenstc, CC BY-SA 4.0. The company traces its roots to the small Elizabethan replica theater inside the Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill. In 1970 the Folger converted the space - originally used for lectures and tours - into a working playhouse, and the Folger Theatre Group began performing. ...

Image: Dpyuenstc | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shakespeare Theatre Company: Repertory as Destiny

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shakespearedc, CC BY-SA 4.0. The regional-theater pioneer Zelda Fichandler used to say that for a resident company, repertory is destiny - you become the theater your seasons make you. Under Kahn the Shakespeare Theatre Company built a repertory that ranged from Aeschylus's The Persians (the oldest surviving...

Image: Shakespearedc | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shakespeare Theatre Company: The Othello Productions

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shakespearedc, CC BY-SA 4.0. Othello has shaped the company's history more than any other play. In 1990 Kahn and the African-American director Harold Scott cast both Othello and Iago with black actors - Avery Brooks as the Moor, Andre Braugher as the ensign who destroys him, Franchelle Stewart Dorn as Emilia...

Image: Shakespearedc | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shakespeare Theatre Company: Free Shakespeare

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shakespearedc, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1991 the company began an annual Free For All program, remounting a production from the previous season and offering it free to the public at the Carter Barron Amphitheatre in Rock Creek Park. For nearly twenty summers, Washingtonians could see Shakespeare under the trees by w...

Image: Shakespearedc | CC BY-SA 4.0

Shakespeare Theatre Company: What the Company Is Now

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shakespearedc, CC BY-SA 4.0. Michael Kahn retired in 2019 after thirty-three years as artistic director, having taken the company from the Folger's tiny replica stage to two purpose-built downtown houses with seasons that competed with anything in New York. His successor is Simon Godwin, who came from London...

Image: Shakespearedc | CC BY-SA 4.0