The Colorado Shakespeare Festival is a Shakespeare Festival each summer at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the outdoor Mary Rippon Theater and indoor University Theatre. The Mary Rippon Theater hosted an annual summer Shakespeare play starting in 1944. The Colorado Shakespeare Festival was founded in 1958, featuring Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and The Taming of the Shrew.[1] Today it is considered one of the top festivals in the country.[2] In 1975, it became the first American Shakespeare festival, and seventh theater in the world, to complete the entire Shakespeare canon.[1] Each year the festival attracts, on average, numbers "in the mid-30,000 range".[2]
The 2011 season features
And, two non-Shakespearean classics,
The festival employs a staff of approximately 170 actors, artisans and technicians each season, who come from points as far away as Cairo, Egypt and Germany, in addition to major regional theatres across the continental USA. Directors of recent note include Joel Fink.