About
Located in Tennessee, the Nashville Shakespeare Festival has been continuously producing free summer Shakespeare since 1988. The Festival presents one main stage show in the summer and one in the Winter, with educational outreach, university co-productions, touring shows and community events throughout the year.
Mission Statement
The mission of the Nashville Shakespeare Festival is to educate and entertain the Mid-South community through professional Shakespearean experiences.
Ways that Nashville Shakespeare Festival has already practiced “green” theatre
Sharing of resources is the Nashville way. Props and set pieces frequently move from show to show, through academic, community, and professional productions. NSF costumes are frequently re-worked and re-used, and all costumes are donated to a local university for future re-use. Recyling bins are all around the Festival grounds, including program recycle boxes. Water re-fill stations are accessible and refilling water bottles is encouraged. Summer Shakespeare is now located at oneC1TY Nashville, where site design, infrastructure, transportation and building design have been planned and are being constructed for LEED Neighborhood Development certification.
Ways that Nashville Shakespeare Festival has already used their productions to highlight local or global ecological issues
In 2013 NSF produced A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM focused on environmental awareness, featuring fairy costumes made of 100% recycled materials including plastic grocery bags, bottle caps, and thrift store clothing. An on-site seed bomb station encouraged audience members to create seed bombs to beautify forgotten places around the city and photograph the flowers after they bloomed.
What are Nashville Shakespeare Festival's eco-theatrical goals and aspirations for the future? What do they want to work on and achieve? What kind of help and advice would be useful to them?
We are interested in learning how to become a greener company. It seems that selling reusable water bottles and offering refil stations for them is the least we can do. We want to do more and will welcome all information helping us in that direction. Our summer audiences are mostly people who enjoy being outside, and we would love to make sure that the environment is as healthy as possible for them.
Visit Nashville Shakespeare Festival's official website here
