Hampton Roads Shakespeare Festival 2008

PRESS PAGE
Information, Press-Quality Images, Downloads

OVERVIEW AND FESTIVAL INFORMATION

This year is the 2008 Season of the Hampton Roads Shakespeare Festival, and we are proud to have as our director William Dean, a Virginia Beach native who has recently returned from six years in New York City as a successful actor, director, and producer, appearing on the David Letterman Show, AMC, NBC, plus a variety of other films, television, and theatre work, both as an actor and behind the scenes. As usual, performances are free and open to the public, supported only by sponsorships and audience donations.

PHOTOS AND GRAPHICS

Promotional Stills:
(right-click link and pick "Save Target As" to save)

Shakespeare Festival Audience Photo:
(right-click link and pick "Save Target As" to save)

Promotional flyer for this year's Festival:
(right-click image and pick "Save Target As" to save)

2008RackCard.PPT

Playbill for this year's Festival:
(right-click image and pick "Save Target As" to save)

2008 Playbill

Please feel free to reproduce these graphics in connection with any press/publicity/review. If you need them in any other format or have other questions, please email the designer at business@summershakes.org. Thank you!

HISTORY OF SUMMER SHAKES

     Summer Shakes, Inc., began its life at the 24th Street Stage with Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, and I Hate Hamlet, and the next year became a traveling Shakespeare troupe, performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream at various venues throughout the city in the hopes of providing a much-needed classical voice to a region which had traditionally favored musicals and modern plays. Formed by the artistic vision of Ann “Russ” Taylor, our mission was not merely to entertain, but also to provide a place where artists and technicians are actually paid for their work. Funded by grants and sponsorships, the company has strived to help build a true local market for the performing arts; despite a wealth of talent and training in the area, most serious professionals are forced out to other states in order to earn a living, and have to be imported back in again as traveling shows and guest artists. Building a viable talent market is a difficult feat to accomplish in a state that ranks among the lowest in the nation in arts funding, but it is an important goal, since the arts are so important to a region’s economic development and prestige, and to the intellectual development of children.
     Our mission has carried us from those early days, performing in scattered theaters and schools and at the Oceanfront, where we performed in the midst of passing car stereos and tour groups, to the Francis Land House, where we often worked on rain-flooded ground, to Seatack Neighborhood Park, where the trees are lovely but the fighter jets loud. Art must struggle to stay alive, but with help from generous city officials and enthusiastic audiences, we have always managed to turn obstacles into opportunity and have great fun doing it.
     Over the years, we have evolved into more than just an outdoor theater; our Festival provided the regional premieres of The Compleat Wks of Wllm Shakspr (Abridged) and The Complete History of America (Abridged) and has nurtured creative and unusual stagings, from As You Like It set in Sandbridge to Romeo and Juliet in the war-torn Middle East. Our educational programs have emerged as a centerpiece of our work, and our “Shakespeare Goes Elementary” program, begun several years ago to teach young students in intensive rehearsals to perform actual Shakespeare plays for their own schools, has expanded steadily with the strong funding support of Geico and now serves four schools, with hopes of adding even more. Our traveling Muse of Fire performance introduced thousands of students to Shakespeare, while our First Folio workshops serve the professional acting community and “Theater for Kids/Teens!” continues to provide training for kids year-round.
     By doing all of this, while keeping our Festival free and open to the public, we have found ourselves becoming a kind of cultural community service, not only providing a rare affordable alternative for audiences to TV, movies, and expensive stage shows, but also providing a complete apprenticeship and training environment for young people in the region. Many of our elementary-school participants have gone on to be castmembers in the mainstage Festival shows (including this year), and some of them have grown up and become paid company and crew members and even gone on to college scholarships.
We are glad to welcome audiences to our 2008 production, and hope they will continue to support us for many years to come!

DIRECTOR BIO

     William Dean collaborated with Ann Russell Taylor in starting Summer Shakes by helping her choose and construct its first production, Star Spangled Girl, and has decorated a few of their sets in following years. Mr. Dean is a graduate of Kempsville High School who studied Shakespeare at the College of William and Mary, where he earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Theatre and Speech in 1987. He performed with the Virginia Shakespeare Festival out of William and Mary for four summers, including two statewide tours. His entertainment experience runs the gamut in theater, television, and film. He has worked as: an Associate Producer for the Travel Channel’s “The Vacation Store,” as extras casting director for Touchstone’s What About Bob? starring Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss, location scout for the Oscar-nominated documentary The Living Sea, local casting director for NBC’s Emmy-winning miniseries “A Woman Named Jackie,” as First Assistant Director for Unsolved Mysteries’ “Edgar Cayce,” and more recently, as a location manager for Universal’s Virus with Jamie Lee Curtis. He also cast Apollo astronaut “Buzz” Aldrin for Coastal Video’s safety-training programs, directed Pack of Lies at the Little Theater of Norfolk, and direct-ed two summer children’s theater workshops for the Kempsville Playhouse. He has worked behind the scenes for Busch Gardens, The Virginia Opera, and The Virginia Stage Company. He also yearns to be an actor when he grows up, and if you’ve watched cable TV, you’ve seen him somewhere, sometime; perhaps in the AMC Channel’s Morning Movie Testimonial series, where he starred in over 11 spots. He has appeared on camera opposite Bryce Howard, Amy Locane, and Michael Biehn, an actor he handled props for in the locally-shot movie Navy S.E.A.L.s starring Charlie Sheen. He has been seen in national commercials, and has appeared in sketches on “Late Night with David Letterman.” He played lead roles locally in The Discovery Channel’s The New Detectives and FBI Files. While in New York, he worked for notables Robert DeNiro (in his Tribeca Series “Honor”) and Oscar winner and Emmy-winning producer Lee Grant (on her LifeTime series “Intimate Portraits”). He has his own cable show with Manhattan Neighborhood Networks public access television entitled “On the Scene with Billy Dean,” in its second year of production. During his stay in New York, Mr. Dean per-formed with Instant Shakespeare in marathon readings of all the Shakespeare plays during the year, from the original Elizabethan scripts, known as the First Folio. These scripts have led to a technique in learning and performing Shakespeare, which he has applied to this production. This show represents the culmination of his years of study with Shakespeare and his years of performance in the Theater Arts. He thanks his parents and friends for their support, and the cast for their enthusiasm.