Shakespeare Dallas is The People’s Theatre. We use Shakespeare and other timeless stories to connect all North Texans with accessible, alive, and culturally relevant performances and education.
Founded in 1972, Shakespeare Dallas began with a simple idea: great theatre should be available to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. More than 50 years later, that belief remains at the heart of everything we do.
Each year, Shakespeare Dallas serves more than 40,000 people through professional productions, student performances, school touring programs, camps, classes, and community partnerships. Our artistic home is Samuell-Grand Amphitheatre, a public park in East Dallas where generations of North Texans have gathered under the stars for Shakespeare in the Park.
Access is central to our mission. Our highest-priced Shakespeare in the Park ticket is just $20, and more than half of our audiences now attend for free through complimentary and subsidized ticket programs. We distribute free tickets through recreation centers, schools, and community partners throughout Dallas so that cost does not determine who gets to experience live professional theatre.
Our commitment to access begins with young people. Shakespeare on the Go!, our education program established in 1984, reaches more than 12,000 students annually through school tours, student matinees, camps, workshops, and Shakespeare Lab. Since its founding, the program has served more than 650,000 students across North Texas.
Shakespeare Lab, our free summer intensive for students entering grades 8–12, gives young people the opportunity to train and perform alongside professional theatre artists at no cost to their families. Through partnerships with Dallas College and other educational institutions, we are also building pathways for students to continue developing their skills through apprenticeships, postsecondary education, and leadership opportunities.
Shakespeare Dallas also invests in the artists who make this work possible. Our productions employ professional actors, directors, designers, technicians, teaching artists, and emerging theatre professionals from across North Texas. We believe accessible theatre should also be ambitious theatre: work that is bold, relevant, inclusive, and reflective of the community we serve.
A donation to Shakespeare Dallas directly supports this mission. Gifts help us provide free and affordable tickets, bring Shakespeare into schools, offer scholarships and completely free youth programming, pay professional artists, and care for our longtime home at Samuell-Grand Amphitheatre.
Every gift helps keep the doors, and the park gates, open.
Whether someone is seeing Shakespeare for the first time on a school field trip, performing onstage through Shakespeare Lab, bringing their family to the park with free tickets, or returning to Samuell-Grand after decades of summer performances, we want them to know this theatre belongs to them.
That is what it means to be The People’s Theatre.
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