OUR HISTORY

The Journey from Shakespeare to Shakes

Richmond Shakespeare has been performing at historic Agecroft Hall and Gardens for the last 20 years. However, the theatre traces its origins all the way back to the 1985 founding of Encore! Theatre, Inc. In 1998, Encore hosted the first Richmond Shakespeare Festival with performances in the bandshell at The Boulders before moving the Festival to its permanent home at Agecroft Hall in 1999. With the growing success of the Festival and sensing a greater desire for Shakespeare and other classics in the community, Encore! officially changed its name to Richmond Shakespeare in 2006.

Richmond Shakespeare transformed into Quill in 2013 as the result of its merger with Henley Street Theatre, thanks to their similar mission statements and like-minded devotion to creating theatre that celebrates the power of language. Henley began in 2007 with the simple goal of producing quality theatre grounded in the classics, including Shakespeare. Based on the quality of its work, Henley quickly rose to become a valued member of the theatre community, winning numerous awards for productions and providing a variety of educational opportunities for youth. With similar goals and growing audiences, collaboration between Henley and Richmond Shakespeare was only natural.

Richmond Shakespeare and Henley Street Theatre formally began working toward a union in early 2013, operating together with a shared vision of fully integrating into a single entity within two years. The full merger was completed in May of 2015.

What’s in a name? We all know Shakespeare’s take on the subject. So why the return to Richmond Shakespeare from Quill Theatre? During the pandemic, the theatre industry was put on pause and it has been an uphill climb for those of us who have been lucky enough to survive and return to producing work. We hope that the nickname Richmond Shakes will help audiences across generations easily identify us and the work that we do without explanation.

As Richmond Shakes, we remain committed to our goal of producing high quality productions of Shakespeare, as well as other classic works for a modern audience. We also like to work with exciting new plays that resonate with our reverence for language, our commitment to sharing ideas and bold staging that ignites the heart and mind.

Richmond Shakes is committed to the principles of access, equity, inclusion, and diversity in our board of directors, staff, and programming. To make our work accessible to as wide of an audience as possible, we keep our ticket prices amongst the lowest price in the region. To bring the classics to all, we offer all of our education programs at or below cost because we believe everyone should have the chance to experience live theatre.