The Nashville Summer Shakespeare Festival celebrates its 34th year

This year marks the 34th anniversary of the Nashville Summer Shakespeare Festival, which puts on free, outdoor performances of The Bard and other playwrights’ work. This year, the festival includes Cymbeline and, starting on the 25th, August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean.

To learn more about how the festival got its start and how it relates to Nashville’s broader theater community, we’re joined by the executive artistic director and managing director. Then, we’ll hear from the directors of both plays about their productions and what meaning we can take from them today.

But first, WPLN enterprise reporter Damon Mitchell shares his reporting on rebuilding efforts in Waverly as we approach the one year anniversary of last year’s devastating flood.

Guests: 

• Damon Mitchell, WPLN enterprise reporter
• Denice Hicks, Nashville Shakespeare Festival executive artistic director
• Robert Marigza-Yeo, Nashville Shakespeare Festival managing director
• Leah Lowe, director of Cymbeline and associate professor of theater at Vanderbilt University
• Chuck Smith, director of Gem of the Ocean and resident director of the Goodman Theater in Chicago

Additional reading:

WPLN: Waverly’s flood recovery has a long way to go, and the deaths and departures make for an uncertain future