Alabama Shakespeare Festival

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The Carolyn Blount Theatre has been home to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival since 1985.

The Alabama Shakespeare Festival (ASF) is the seventh largest Shakespeare festival in the world. Each year, it attracts more than 300,000 visitors from each of the United States, and more than 60 countries, to its home, in Montgomery, Alabama.

ASF operates all year, producing 12–14 world-class productions annually, typically including three works of William Shakespeare. The remaining plays sample various genres and playwrights, sometimes with an emphasis on Southern works. ASF's Southern Writers Project nurtures the creation of new plays that reflect Southern themes.

ASF began in 1972 as a summer stock-theater project in Anniston; its first performance was at the Anniston High School auditorium, before a single critic and his wife; the critic considered the performance very poor and predicted that ASF would not survive. Eventually, the Shakespeare Festival grew to garner critical acclaim, but lacked the financial support to keep it afloat. In December 1985, ASF moved to Montgomery, as the result of Mr. and Mrs. Winton Blount's $21.5-million gift of a performing-arts complex set in a 250-acre (1-km²) park, the Winton M. Blount Cultural Park. The Carolyn Blount Theatre houses the 750-seat Festival Stage and the 225 seat Octagon Theatre.

ASF operates a Professional Actor Training program leading to the M.F.A. degree in cooperation with the University of Alabama Department of Theatre and Dance. Tony Award–winning actor Norbert Leo Butz and Emmy Award–winning actor Michael Emerson are two of the program's most successful alumni. On April 25, 2008, ASF announced that its relationship with the University of Alabama is ending.

Since 1998, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts has also been in the Blount Cultural Park.