President's Message

The Kingsmen Shakespeare Company has made a significant and positive impact on the Ventura County arts and education scene since its founding fourteen years ago.

From its very first Festival performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream through this past summer's The Comedy of Errors and The Winter's Tale, the Company has offered the people of Ventura County and beyond outstanding productions of William Shakespeare's plays, employing the finest professional actors, directors and production people Southern California has to offer.

In addition, since its early years the Company has been involved with educating young people from local elementary schools all the way up to college students from across the nation through our Shakespeare Educational Tour, summer Camp Shakespeare programs, and our Junior Apprentice and Apprentice companies associated with the summer Festival.

Local teachers too have attended workshops specifically designed to help them teach Shakespeare to the children in their grade levels, and this past summer we offered them special educational workshops in which we partnered with the Folger Shakespeare Library, the preeminent Shakespeare educational library in the country. Indeed, today everything we do combines education with performance, thereby fulfilling the mission we set for ourselves when we first formed the Company. We are justifiably proud, I think, of our success to date.

But we do have goals we have not yet attained. It is our dream to expand our educational programs so that students in every primary and middle school in Ventura County — and as many schools beyond as possible — will have the benefit of learning about and enjoying the plays of the greatest playwright in human history.

Yes, times are tough right now, and we know that it is always arts programs that are the first to be cut in such times — to the detriment of our children in so many ways. The Board of the Kingsmen Shakespeare Company and I invite you to join us so that with your help we can continue to provide important art education in our schools and thereby fulfill our dream to the benefit of the children and all the people in the region.

Jarvis Streeter
President
The Kingsmen Shakespeare Board of Directors