Tourism Council of Frederick County

The Maryland Shakespeare Festival is a professional, non-profit regional theater company. For a decade, Maryland Shakespeare Festival has been playing Shakespeare the way Shakespeare and his company played it---bold, passionate and sometimes rowdy! For a decade our Good Will Summer Tour has offered joyous, casual, free performances in parks across Maryland with live music and a festival atmosphere for the entire family. MSF is the only theater in the Frederick area working under an Equity contract (the national union of professional actors and stage managers.) The Maryland Shakespeare Festival also employs some of the most respected designers in the Mid-Atlantic region, creating productions at the highest artistic levels. From October to April MSF offers our Bare Bard Series (Shakespeare without the trimmings) in our performance hall in Frederick. We draw professional artists from around the country for our unique training in original Shakespearean practices that generates our signature performances of Shakespeare’s plays. MSF and the Bare Bard Series are recognized by Shakespearean artists as a cutting-edge training ground for classical theater and a center for scholarship and experimentation. We also train middle-school and high- school students in our Riotous Youth program. These classes culminate in public performances each spring and fall. More than 10,000 other students benefit annually from the Shakespeare Alive! program, which takes professional performances and acting workshops to schools around the state.