The Carolyn Blount Theatre has been home to the Alabama Shakespeare Festival since 1985.
The Alabama Shakespeare Festival (ASF) is the seventh largest Shakespeare
festival in the world. Each year, it attracts more than 300,000 visitors from each of the United
States, and more than 60 countries, to its home, in Montgomery,
Alabama.
ASF operates all year, producing 12–14 world-class productions annually, typically including three works of William
Shakespeare. The remaining plays sample various genres and playwrights, sometimes with an emphasis on Southern works.
ASF's Southern Writers Project nurtures the creation of new plays that reflect Southern themes.
ASF began in 1972 as a summer stock-theater project in Anniston; its first
performance was at the Anniston High School auditorium, before a single critic and his wife; the
critic considered the performance very poor and predicted that ASF would not survive. Eventually, the Shakespeare Festival grew
to garner critical acclaim, but lacked the financial support to keep it afloat. In December 1985, ASF moved to Montgomery, as the
result of Mr. and Mrs. Winton Blount's $21.5-million gift of a performing-arts complex
set in a 250-acre (1-km²) park, the Winton M. Blount
Cultural Park. The Carolyn Blount Theatre houses the 750-seat Festival Stage and the 225 seat Octagon Theatre.
ASF operates a Professional Actor Training program leading to the M.F.A. degree
in cooperation with the University of Alabama Department of Theatre and Dance.
Tony Award–winning actor Norbert Leo Butz and
Emmy Award–winning actor Michael Emerson are two of
the program's most successful alumni.
Since 1998, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts has also been in the
Blount Cultural Park.
External links
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