Steffy Gonzalez:
When you think of the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, you might think of those plays they do outside in the evening over there. This is the Shakespeare Glen in St. Louis Forest Park. It may not look like much right now, but come summertime, nearly 40,000 people will experience the works of William Shakespeare right here under the Stars and for absolutely free. But that’s just the beginning of what the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival does for this region. Hi, I’m Stephanie Gonzalez, and this is Do Some Good where we profile those in the community who are working to make things just a little bit better. The day’s just a little bit brighter and overall do some good. Today we’re talking to the St. Louis Shakespeare festival’s artistic director, Tom Ridgeley, as he tells us how much more there is to the Shakespeare Festival than just a walk in the park. Let’s talk to Tom.

Tom Ridgely:
Hi, I am Tom Ridgely, Artistic Director of the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival.

Steffy:
So how did the organization start off?

Tom:
Well, it’s a really interesting story actually. The festival was founded by the community. Some relatively prominent folks felt that St. Louis ought to have a free outdoor Shakespeare festival like a number of other cities did at the time, and a woman named Lana Pepper got involved and she really did most of the heavy lifting getting the first season off the ground. So it took a few years for all of that to come together.

Steffy:
What was the first show?

Tom:
It was Romeo and Juliet.

Steffy:
Oh, love it.

Tom:
And it was one of those things, no one had any idea what to expect.

Tom:
They’d hired actors and a director and they’d pick the spot in Forest Park what it was going to be, and they’d raise a lot of money and figured out how it was going to work for the audience. Thousands of people showed up. Performance was incredibly moving and things were off and running.

Steffy:
It’s obviously not the 15 hundreds anymore. How have you modernized the show?

Tom:
Well, it’s probably not going to be what you might imagine in your mind if you’ve never seen Shakespeare before. There’s that image of the neck ruffs and the men and tights and those sorts of things. And that’s never been on our stage. Not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because obviously what we’re always trying to do with these plays is to find the ways that they speak to us today.

Tom:
What’s so incredible about them is that they continue to time and time and again. But what the artists do, and they’re really the ones that realize these shows is they’re the lightning rod. They’re attuned to what’s going on and they’re picking up on the connections. Oh, this moment in Hamlet is sort of like this moment for us right now politically or this moment between Rosalyn Orlando is like this moment that we all probably felt the first time we fell head over heels in love with someone. What’s on stage is a range of things. It might be very contemporary, it might be older, but not quite Elizabethan or lots of times it’ll be sort of timeless just to put the focus on the story and the characters and what they’re going through because that’s what it’s about. So we work really hard to make sure that you as the audience don’t have to do that work. The actors are doing that work, and if they’re doing it well, then it’s easy to sit back and relax and let the story move you.

Steffy:
The Shakespeare Festival, a lot of people think of it as just what happens in the park, but it’s not just Shakespeare in the park, it’s Shakespeare kind of all over St. Louis. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Tom:
Yeah. Most people know us from the Glen. That’s certainly, it’s the first thing we do. It’s still the biggest thing that we do, and we’re really proud. I mean, free Shakespeare in the park is an incredible thing, and we wanted to make sure that it was really available to everyone. So about 10 years ago, we started a program called Shakespeare in the Streets that moves around to a different neighborhood every year, and we spend a year or more getting to know the people there. We interview them, we collect stories, and we adapt to Shakespeare play to tell the story of that community. Shakespeare in the Streets is really about trying to carry people over the sort of geographic and psychological barriers that we have in the region. So we’ve tried to work with neighborhoods all over St. Louis. So we’ve been to Cherokee Street, we’ve been to Grove, we’ve been in Clayton, we’ve been in Old North, we’ve been in the V, we’ve been in Brussels, Illinois.

Tom:
We’re going to meet in East St. Louis next year. We’ve been downtown twice Bevo Mill. So trying to spread it around to remind everyone that as much as we can get comfortable in our own sort of pockets and bubbles, we really can’t be the St. Louis we want to be until we embrace all of it. And with Shakespeare in the streets, that’s what you get to do. You get to come to a place you probably wouldn’t otherwise go to and not just be there, but be with those people, hear those stories, and share that with folks from all over the region.

Steffy:
Yeah, there’s no one audience. There’s no one demographic for Shakespearean.

Tom:
It’s for everyone.

Steffy:
It’s everywhere. You had mentioned that there’s Shakespeare in everything apparently. Shakespeare coined upwards of what? A couple hundred words and phrases? So a little segment that we wanted to is called Much Ado About Words.

Tom:
Oh yeah. Fun!

Steffy:
So there’s some multiple choice here, one of which was coined by Shakespeare. First one, assassination democracy or electricity?

Tom:
Assassination.

Steffy:
You said that so fast. You’re right. Canine, eyeball, thunderstorm.

Tom:
Eyeball,

Steffy:
Mimicry, circumference, swagger.

Tom:
I’m going to guess… swagger.

Steffy:
Yes. God. Skimpy, front, rant.

Tom:
Rant.

Steffy:
Yes. You ran the list by him first, because that’s impossible. And then we have some phrases too. We didn’t just use the words. Apparently he wasn’t satisfied with words. He wanted phrases as well.

Tom:
Sure.

Steffy:
So break the ice, pass the buck, out of the blue.

Tom:
Out of the blue.

Steffy:
Break the ice. Break the ice.

Steffy:
Turn over a new leaf, I haven’t slept one wink, or silver lining.

Tom:
Slept a wink. Yeah.

Steffy:
Spill the beans, the writing’s on the wall, or a laughing stock.

Tom:
Laughing stock.

Steffy:
No pressure, but this is the last one. Wild goose chase, cut to the chase, close, but no cigar.

Tom:
Wild goose chase.

Steffy:
It’s wild goose chase. That’s remarkable. 25 years is no small thing. For the next 25 years we project, or even the next year what’s going on.

Tom:
Four or five years ago, we started something called a Confluence new play festival. We commissioned three new plays by writers from Missouri or Illinois. So we’re really trying to invest in people who are making work in and around St. Louis. Not only have we gotten to know artists that we never would’ve gotten to know, but they’ve gotten an opportunity to get paid to work on something new, to get a reading in front of an audience, and a lot of those readings have led to productions. So not only are we sort of trying to invest in emerging artists, but we’ve also been producing new work. Nothing to do with Shakespeare. We got a version of Christmas Carol, Christmas Carol, the remix.

Tom:
By this group out of Chicago that started out doing hip hop adaptations of Shakespeare plays and talk about making a contemporary here. They’ve taken Dickens, this Victorian British writer and turned his story into what’s basically a hip hop opera. The whole thing is sung through. Very funny, very clever, very entertaining. That’s a group we’ve done a number of things with, and we’ve got some other things in the works for next year and down the road, but that commitments to local artists is something that we see growing over the next several years and starting to become pretty equally balanced with the Shakespeare that we do every year.

Tom:
That’s fantastic. So even if it’s not explicitly Shakespeare, you’re fostering this Shakespearean spirit of creativity.

Tom:
Exactly. Then we’re doing something that we’ve never, ever done before, which is we’re partnering with the zoo to do, not Shakespeare in the park, although it’ll still be in the park, but Shakespeare in the zoo. So we’re adapting a comic book called the Stratford Zoo. Midnight Review presents Romeo and Juliet. The setup is basically that at night the animals come out and what do they do, but put on Shakespeare for each other. Juliet’s a Bear. Romeo was a prairie dog, and these animals are being created by the same folks who did The Animals for The Lion King and Frozen, and a lot of other Broadway shows and theme courts and really beautiful, sophisticated lifelike creations. So that’ll be very fun. It’s going to run for at least four weeks in the zoo in the evening, so hopefully be a chance for folks who might not have really thought of themselves as Shakespeare buffs to come and enjoy animals fighting with swords and falling in love and drinking magic potions.

Steffy:
That’s wonderful. I mean, that’s as accessible as it gets is bringing it to the zoo and then making the animals fight. Exactly. Yeah. But the Bard is just the beginning. The team at the festival influence and impact the community beyond the stage at the Glen. From the classroom to Street Corner, the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival is encouraging and inspiring and appreciation of the arts across the region and beyond.

Tom:
We have a summer Shakespeare studio that is for middle high school age students. They can spend a month here or other places studying Shakespeare. They get to put on their own mini Shakespeare plays, and some of those end up in the Glen as preshow entertainments or Spark Notes versions of the play that folks are about to see. But there’s a really amazing group of really passionate, dedicated young people who have already discovered a love for Shakespeare. I think what they find there is a sense of community that they might not find at their school because they might not be the coolest thing. They might feel a little lonely being the Shakespeare buffs at their schools. But once you realize like, oh, every school’s got one or two, and when they all get together, I think they feel like they’ve found their people.

Steffy:
The festival has a deep and involved commitment to arts in the schools because of this. What began as a simple performance at Sumner High School has evolved over time to become a partnership with St. Louis Public Schools and For the Ville organization to strengthen and grow the school, the community, and most important, the opportunities provided to the students.

Tom:
Young people who might not have had the same opportunity to develop that talent or to have that talent recognized are having that. And they’re incredibly talented kids. There was a kid who just taught himself to play piano by year, and all of a sudden there’s piano players in there saying, oh, wait, come with us. Let’s nurture this.

Tom:
Let’s invest in this. When that started, there were a little bit under 200 students, and now there’s almost 400. So enrollments is nearly doubled. Graduation rates are up, disciplinary incidents are down, attendance is up trending way above the district, and there’s just been this sort of ripple effect. The students are winning chess tournaments and history day competitions, things that have nothing to do with the arts, just because there’s sort of this feeling of energy and momentum and positivity that’s come as a result of it. But the most important thing is that the school’s open. It’s got a new lease on life.

Steffy:
Whether it’s been through one of the many performances on a pleasant evening, a workshop with students, activities on the streets of the city, or merely the smallest of moments that sparked a new interest in the arts. The festival has impacted, inspired, energized, and entertained the community for 25 years, and we encourage everyone to not only experience the good that they do firsthand, but to do some good themselves. What would be your ideal way for community members to get involved?

Tom:
Just come to see a show. That’s the only way I can start. Really. I think there’s something, again, in these stories, in this language that’s incredible, which is why 400 years later, he’s still the most produced playwright in America. Yeah. Come to the park next summer. Keep your ears open for when the tour is coming near you. And yeah, just come.

Steffy:
For over 25 years, the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival has done good in St. Louis. Whether through amazing performances in Forest Park, smaller performances throughout the region, special holiday shows, workshops, or their incredible commitment to Sumner High School, the festival represents the best of St. Louis. We thank them for their generosity and their time, and thank you for watching. We invite you to experience the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival firsthand, and you’ll see what makes them and St. Louis so special. Remember together we can all do some good.