Nevada Shakespeare Company
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[edit] Introduction
The Nevada Shakespeare Company (NSC) is an activist theatre based in Reno, Nevada, near Nevada's border with California. It defines its mission to be to "meeting the needs of our uniquely challenging and diverse community. Embracing principles of Universal Access, we serve more than 100,000 children, youth and adults each year with theatre outreach."
While NSC has produced non-Shakespearean works since 1989, each season continues to include at least one of Shakespeare’s plays.
Currently, the company’s focus is on A Single Woman (play) by NSC artistic director Jeanmarie Simpson and also the new work, On Track based on the life of peace activist S. Brian Willson. A Single Woman is also a film in-process, directed by Kamala Lopez-Dawson. In 2007, NSC will present the American premiere of Shakespeare's Will, a solo-work by Canadian playwright Vern Thiessen about Anne Hathaway, wife of Shakespeare.
[edit] History
1989 – 1999
Founded in May 1989 by Jeanmarie Simpson and Roderick Dexter, Nevada Shakespeare Company produced artist-driven theatre in venues throughout Nevada. NSC’s work has ranged from the Greek classics to Shakespeare to modern playwrights to new work. In 1993 Nevada Shakespeare Company and the City of Reno co-created Theatre in the Park in downtown Reno. In 1998 they began collaborating with the Nevada Museum of Art when they presented Arthur Miller’s Elegy for a Lady to capacity houses in conjunction with their exhibit, The Horengracht, by Edward Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz. In June of 1999, Piper’s Opera House invited Nevada Shakespeare Company to present Season 2000 at the historic Opera House located in Virginia City, where NSC was the first resident theatre company since 1896.
2000 - 2005
In 2000, NSC seated thousands more patrons at Piper’s Opera House than had seen the inside of the beautiful old theatre in the entire previous century. Country singer Lacy J. Dalton starred in their unique adaptation of Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun. They produced a six-actor Hamlet, a Monty Python Midsummer Night’s Dream and a black-leather, rock and roll Macbeth. They presented Hal Holbrook in his Tony Award-winning, Mark Twain Tonight! 2001 gave birth to NSC’s perennial educational program, Shakespeare In School. The spring offering that season was The Music Man, and later that summer they offered Twelfth Night and Richard III in repertory. August 2001 brought Leonard Nimoy and his wife, Susan Bay in Reader’s Theatre and the season closed with Romeo and Juliet. “Better than the RSC,” said the Reno News and Review, of Nevada Shakespeare’s summer 2002 version of The Tempest. In 2003, Nevada Shakespeare produced Athol Fugard’s The Road to Mecca directed by Tony Award Winner Zakes Mokae in association with the University of Nevada La Vegas. Amigas, an original Nevada Shakespeare adaptation, premiered at the Nevada Museum of Art, followed by Jeanmarie Simpson’s four actor treatment of King Lear. 2004 kicked off a national tour of A Single Woman, which ran Off-Broadway in May and June of 2005 at the Culture Project in New York. The play closed at the Invisible Theatre in Tucson, Arizona on November 5, 2006.
