Kentucky Shakespeare

​​Serving Pre-K through 12th grade ​​​​​​​​​​​​

Kentucky Shakespeare is a nonprofit, professional theatre company, the Official Shakespeare Festival of the commonwealth and the largest in-school arts education outreach provider in Kentucky. Since 1990, Kentucky Shakespeare has served over 1,000,000 students in all 120 Kentucky counties and beyond with in-classroom arts workshops and residencies and full school performances and assemblies.      

Performances available include Living History: We the People; Living History: Kentucky History; A Midsummer Night’s Dream spring tour; two-actor Romeo and Juliet; and Shakespeare Alive!    

Class workshops available include Bard Buddies; Fairy Tales from Around the World; Hip-Hop Shakespeare; Conflict Resolution and Anti-Bullying; Acting Fundamentals; Stage Combat; Staging Shakespeare; Renaissance Dance; Discovering Shakespeare; and Voices of Young Women.     

Kentucky Shakespeare’s mission is to enrich communities through accessible, professional theatre experiences that educate, inspire and entertain diverse audiences. Programs are accompanied with comprehensive curriculum guides, directly tied to academic standards, to help impact student achievement.     

Kentucky Shakespeare has been recognized by the Folger Library and the Kentucky Humanities Council for exemplary programming, is a multiyear recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Shakespeare in American Communities program and is a past recipient of the Kentucky Governor’s Award in the Arts. Kentucky Shakespeare has been awarded multiple LEO Weekly Reader’s Choice Awards, Broadway World Louisville Regional Awards, the 2015 Center for Nonprofit Excellence’s Art of Vision Pyramid Award, the 2017 Louisville Awards in the Arts Bobby Petrino Family Foundation Arts Impact Award and the 2019 Arts for All Kentucky Community Partner Award for arts inclusion work with people with disabilities.  ​