Welcome to Texas Shakespeare Festival 25th Season

Located in East Texas, in the little town of Kilgore, this professional theater has brought arts, entertainment and education to the area since 1986. Founded by Raymond Caldwell, the festival has grown each year, performing a wide variety of classics, contemporary plays and musicals. The festival has performed over 977 performances for more than one hundred and sixty-six thousand people.

(stage manger & assistant stage manger Siobhan Ruance

and Katie Chance and actor Luke Eddy)

With actors and artists from all over the US and two foreign countries contributing to the work this season it promises to be wonderful celebration of 25 years of incredible theater.

(Julia Kosanovich and Stephanie Shaw in the costume shop)

(Shellen Seifert, Amy Shimko and Oneida San Juan paint crew working on floors in Texas heat)

We hope you will join us at http://www.texasshakespearefestival.blogspot.com/ for insights and interviews from the actors, designers and directors behind this season.

(2010 TSF Company, not pictured company manager John Dodd, much to his happiness)

Performing in Repertory all shows take place in the Van Cliburn Auditorium located on the Kilgore College campus. This season promises to be a light-hearted treat for the whole family, with the selection of all comedies to delight our audiences.

The shows open July 1st and run through August 1st.


Our season opens with William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, one of the Bard’s most beloved romances. With sparkling wit and passionate characters, it promises to be a charming treat. Directed by Jack Young a returning artist, who has staged Julius Caesar ('08) and Amadeus ('07) for TSF.



William Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona is back at the festival by popular demand! This romantic comedy has been adapted to include a torch singer and three-piece jazz combo onstage performing music from the 1930’s. Two Gentlemen of Verona is directed by Gregg Brevoort a returning artist, who staged Coriolanus ('06) for TSF.


The Learned Ladies by Moliere, the most beloved classical playwright of France is a fast-moving caper that takes a comic look at intellectual pretension and love. Set in the early 1900’s NYC, this show is directed by Brendon Fox, a talented new TSF director from Los Angeles.


Our season is rounded out with the musical Two by Two, a fresh retelling of the Biblical story of Noah. By turns inspirational and hilarious, we are lucky to have new TSF director Alan Souza from New York to helm this lyrical treat for the whole family.


Come back and visit the blog often for behind-the-scenes photos, videos and interviews. Thank you for supporting the Texas Shakespeare Festival 2010 season!

Interview with actor Andrew Goldwasser

“...The best privilege for me as an actor is to get to speak those words, the best words ever written. To get to speak them and hopefully move a modern audience with something that was written hundreds of years ago.”







AG: Andrew Goldwasser
AH: Adam Higgins

AH
Andrew, how did you get into theater?

AG
When I was younger I always enjoyed it, but I never really seriously considered it as a career until I went to college. I went to Tulane studying law, but I wasn’t enjoying it, and I decided to have an extracurricular activity, something I knew I would enjoy. I auditioned for a play-- I did it and thought ‘Y'know, this is all I'm really enjoying about college, so why not study the thing you love?' So I transferred to the University of Arizona (where they have a good theater department) and I haven’t looked back since.

AH
What professional experiences have brought you to where you are now?

AG
I would say the internship at Milwaukee Rep was my first big professional job. I mean it was only an internship, but coming right out of college I did that and working there at one of the biggest and best regional theaters in the country, on the job training is better than anything you could ask for, and getting to see how they work. That was still probably the most formative experience I've had in theater. I met Sandy Robbins of the PTTP, where I study now, and he directed one show I was in (The Voysey Inheritance) at Milwaukee Rep, and I liked him and his way of working. After the Rep I worked in California at PCPA (Pacific Conservatory for the Performing Arts) and it was a wonderful mix of musical, contemporary and classical theater.

AH
What drew you to classical theater program like the PTTP?

AG
Arizona’s one of the best places (I think) to go for musical theater, but I felt like I could work more on my classical experience. When I left I saw people speaking Shakespeare's words, and I was thinking 'Gosh, I don't really have the artistry to do that', and so I wanted to go to a training program that was really known for that kind of work, because the best privilege for me as an actor is to get to speak those words, the best words ever written. To get to speak them and hopefully move a modern audience with something that was written hundreds of years ago. I think that's the power of theater, so I'd like to just spend the rest of my life doing that, and I'd be pretty happy.

AH
What are the roles that you’ll be playing this year at TSF?

AG
I'm playing Chrysale in The Learned Ladies, then I'm playing Thurio in Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Duke Frederick in As You Like It.

AH
What excites you about these parts you're going to be playing this year?

AG
"I just finished a production of Two Gents where I played Valentine... so approaching the same play from a completely different perspective should be a blast. Duke Frederick is not a big role, but it is always fun to play someone with a little bit of 'evil' in them and I look forward to that and I played Touchstone in As You... at the University of Delaware in 2008. And Chrysale is the longest of my roles this summer and it is my first time really having a lot to do in a Moliere play. It is terribly exciting just to read the play and see what a comic genius Moliere was and how funny the rhymed translation we are doing is... I am looking forward to this summer!"

(images; headshot by Brian Dally, PTTP As You Like It photo Mark Corkins with Andrew Goldwasser by Bill Browning, Two Gentlemen of Verona photo by Bill Browning)