Founded in 2001 by Damond Morris along with Carolyn Travis and Trey Hatch, the Western Washington Shakespeare Festival began performing at Mount Vernon’s Edgewater Park. Its motto: “outdoors and under the stars, the way it was meant to be.”

And it's true. There really is something particularly magical about creating and experiencing Shakespeare out of doors. Our beloved Bard set numerous scenes from several of his plays in forest glades, private gardens, and shadowy thickets. These were places of unpredictable possibilities and known to be the haunt of fairies. However, for an itinerant theater company, magic and reality often collide. Being seasonal tenants required the company to essentially build a new theater from scratch each summer—renting and installing lighting and sound equipment and demanding hundreds of hours of volunteer labor, much of which came from the actors and crew, who were simultaneously committing enormous time and energy to the individual productions.

In 2008, SNW shifted its main stage productions to local indoor venues such as the Phil Tarro Theater and McIntyre Hall at Skagit Valley College. Our vagabond company continued to bring high quality productions and Shakespeare’s stories to audiences and continued to seek for a longterm home.

In the fall of 2009, representatives of Shakespeare Northwest were guided into an overgrown and secluded rock-walled space on the property of the Rexville Grange. The old, former quarry had once provided material for dikes along the Skagit River but had long been reclaimed by nature. Despite the brambles and tall grasses and the soggy, rock-strewn ground, its soaring rock walls surrounded by trees immediately sung of amazing potential. Several months of systematic hacking, pruning, raking, leveling, and clearing have only reinforced that impression. 2019 will mark our ninth season at the Rexville-Blackrock Amphitheatre. SNW has partnered with the Rexville Grange to begin developing the Rexville-Blackrock Amphitheatre into a premier outdoor performance venue. We've found a Home.

Shakespeare Northwest

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