Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan

Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan
Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan tents by the Mendel Art Gallery
Genre	Shakespeare in the park theatre two full-length Shakespeare plays
Dates	first week in July until mid August.
Location(s)	Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada
Years active	1985 – present
Website
Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan

Coordinates: 52°07′53″N 106°40′04″W / 52.13145°N 106.6677076°W / 52.13145; -106.6677076

Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan (Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan Festival) is an annual summer Shakespeare theatre festival founded in 1985, which takes place in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Under its origin of Nightcap Productions, founder and first Artistic Director Gordon McCall brought a group of exciting theatre artists together to put up the first production - A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the summer of 1985 on an old lawn bowling pitch near the current festival site. During Gordon’s tenure from 1985-1991, the festival saw the production of seven of Shakespeare’s plays plus a remounted national tour - a landmark bilingual production of Romeo & Juliette co-directed with Robert Lepage. These productions celebrated the festival atmosphere and challenged approaches to Shakespeare.

Henry Woolf, British-born actor/playwright/director and past Head of the University of Saskatchewan Drama Department, assumed the role of artistic director of the company in 1991. During Woolf’s years, the company grew to become a multi-faceted festival and theatre company that included music, dance, and workshops, presenting off-season and non-Shakespeare productions, including the North American premiere of Harold Pinter's Ashes to Ashes. His productions over the next ten seasons earned national acclaim and public notoriety. His production of Much Ado about Nothing (1993) set in "The Bug Kingdom" had purists buzzing with anger, but the evil Don John as a black widow spider and Hero as a lovely butterfly captured the imagination of many new patrons. Woolf retired as artistic director in 2001.