The Alabama Shakespeare Festival (aka “ASF”) 2018
Exploring the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery
Throughout the country there are other Shakespeare festivals, yet Alabama’s is credited for being among the best this country has to offer.
History
The Alabama Shakespeare Festival has been a center point for Montgomery since 1985. However, “ASF” has not always been situated across the park from the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.
The story of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, lovingly referred to as “ASF,” begins in Anniston, Alabama in 1972. Equipped with nothing more than, according to Dr. Susan Willis, “a store-front space and then in an non-air conditioned high school auditorium.” Back then, ASF was referred to as “Theatre in the Mind” which stood as an educational program and is still active today in the Carolyn Blount Theatre.
Dr. Willis is a renown dramaturg — a literary editor on the staff of a theater — and English professor at Auburn University at Montgomery, who has been with the theater for decades. Dr. Willis has been with ASF as dramaturg, director, and a board member of the company since its roots in Anniston for 24 years and counting. Dr. Willis has proven time and time again that she very well is one of Montgomery’s most preeminent Shakespearean scholars as well as valued historian on ASF.
“There were no Equity actors in that original company (they got their first Equity contract several years later) and the new artistic director, Martin Platt, had just graduated from Carnegie Mellon’s theatre program. The high school subsequently built a beautiful -air conditioned!- new auditorium with special ability to accommodate a thrust stage for ASF’s summer performances. Later ASF added a store-front second space to the repertory plans. It stayed in Anniston through 1984, at which time the move to Montgomery was already under way, with construction of the current Carolyn Blount Theatre in Blount Park.”- Dr. Susan Willis, MFA Faculty and Dramaturg for Alabama Shakespeare Festival.
Cathy Ranieri — a graduate student from the Theatre AUM program — has worked for the Alabama Shakespeare Festival thanks to connections from the theatre program offered at AUM. Cathy learned a great deal of the history of ASF’s origins. Ranieri recalls,
“The Festival faced bankruptcy in the early 1980’s. Board member Carolyn Blount approached her husband, Wynton Blount. He agreed to build a new home for ASF, set in a 250-acre park, if only the theatre would move to Montgomery. Mr. Blount christened the performing arts complex “The Carolyn Blount Theatre” in December 1985.”- Cathy Ranieri, Box Office Shift Leader at Alabama Shakespeare Festival.
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-Kodi Robertson
More About This Article
This article was written as a creative project assignment for a journalism course, Media Writing II, at Auburn University at Montgomery in Spring 2018. More information and amazing articles can be found here!