Chesapeake Shakespeare Company
The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is now celebrating its 18th season as a Maryland theatre company, its sixth season in Baltimore, becoming a leader in the Maryland cultural community.
Founded in 2002, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s new indoor cultural center, located near the Inner Harbor in downtown Baltimore, opened in September 2014. The theatre transformed a 19th Century landmark bank building into a modern 260-seat theater inspired by Shakespeare’s Globe. The inaugural Season for Celebration opened with a week of festivities, including a ribbon-cutting on September 15, 2014.
The cultural center includes The Studio and home of Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s acting courses and workshops for adults and youth, with courses for personal growth, community engagement, acting, theatre craft and design disciplines, critical analysis of plays, and day camp programs.
The 2019-2020 season included: “Dracula,” “Measure for Measure,” “The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged,” “Hamlet,” “A Christmas Carol” and “Much Ado About Nothing.” Founder and Artistic Director Ian Gallanar, Managing Director Lesley Malin, a Board of Trustees, plus more than fifty artists, are the major forces behind Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s success.
Chesapeake Shakespeare Company School Matinees
Recently, Ian Gallanar, Artistic Director & Lesley Malin, Managing Director notified their subscribers and audiences expressing their gratefulness for their continued kindness and patience as they navigate the rapid changes owing the crisis. They wrote: “Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is, and always will be, committed to exploring alongside you, with vibrant, innovative, fun productions, what makes Shakespeare so great. We look forward to bringing you a lineup brimming with stories that have long weathered tempests and continue to act as beacons of hope and humanity.”
“Romeo and Juliet”
Chesapeake Shakespeare Company believes in instilling the love of Shakespeare and live theatre early in life and two children’s tickets are free to every production when accompanied by one paying adult.
When we sat down with to interview Artistic Director Ian Gallanar, he told us: “I attended Indiana University in Indiana, Pennsylvania as a theater major. I had to have had thirty-three mailing addresses in my career, which has culminated with the founding of the Baltimore theater.”
“The creation of Chesapeake Shakespeare Company really began back in Minneapolis, Minnesota when I was leading the National Theatre for Children, a national touring company there. The staff was laid-off in the summer and I wanted my actors to work full-time. Minnesota Shakespeare in the Park had just closed down and I decided to pick up that acting company as a summer project for the Twin Cities. As soon as I directed “Much Ado About Nothing,” it created such a challenge for me that I found my love of Shakespeare and it changed my life.”
“From Minnesota, I led the Repertory Theater of America, another touring company that did lighter fare such as Neil Simon and was located in Texas. It had been doing productions for dinner theaters and that format of theater was losing its popularity. So, I decided that my love of Shakespeare was so great that I reviewed all the cities and found out that Baltimore didn’t have a Shakespeare company and so I moved the company to Maryland in 1999.”
“Chesapeake Shakespeare Company was founded in 2002. Its first production was a showcase of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which I directed, and it was performed for about a hundred patrons. Soon afterwards, the theater company made its home in historic Ellicott City, Maryland, where we built a stage each summer in the stabilized ruins of the Patapsco Female Institute, a 19th century school for girls. Audiences followed Chesapeake Shakespeare Company to winter shows in a variety of rented performance spaces in Howard County.”
“Henry IV”
“I didn’t connect to Shakespeare for many years and thought it was for “fancy” people. However, that idea changed once I realized that there are all kinds of ways for people to connect to Shakespeare. I’m on a mission that Shakespeare is for everyone. Shakespeare shows what is means to be ‘uniquely human.’ It’s so important that we have a ‘shared humanity,’ and my mission is to bridge gaps and find out what we have in common and bring people from all walks of life together in the theater.”
“Some members in the company have been with us for fifteen years! Every spring Chesapeake Shakespeare Company performs nine to ten weeks of “Romeo and Juliet,” so that all Baltimore schools can bring their classes to see Shakespeare for free.”
“Romeo and Juliet”
Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s new theater, located near the Inner Harbor in downtown Baltimore, opened in September 2014. Six years after establishing a theater for the classics in a once-decaying corner of downtown Baltimore, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is fulfilling its promise to be a dynamic performing arts resource for Maryland and a catalyst and leader in Calvert Street’s renaissance.
Valerie Fenton, Kevin Brown, Ron Heneghan, and Steven J. Hoochuk in ”The Taming of the Shrew.’ (Photo: Teresa Castracane)
Since arriving in Baltimore in 2014, the theater company has doubled the number of performances it stages each year and produced the top-selling shows in its history, employing professional artists and technicians based in the Baltimore-D.C. region. As the classical theater of Maryland, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company annually presents eight professional productions of Shakespeare’s works and other plays of classic stature.
“Measure for Measure”
Chesapeake Shakespeare Company also continues to perform outdoors every summer at its longtime home in the picturesque PFI Historic Park in Ellicott City, Maryland. Each summer, thousands join CSC under the stars for festival-style productions of Shakespeare’s works in an enchanting, family-friendly setting. The staff and artists at Chesapeake Shakespeare Company are attempting to create a new model for what a “theater company” is – one that connects to its community and its neighbors in an open way, and one that serves all members of the community including those who don’t have easy access to the arts.
Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is a Folger Shakespeare Library affiliate theatre and a member of the Shakespeare Theatre Association (STA), the international organization for professional Shakespeare theatres. Mr. Gallanar is president of the Shakespeare Theatre Association. For info: Chesapeake Shakespeare Company 7 South Calvert Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21202, (404) 244-8571, www.chesapeakeshakespeare.com
