The Camden Shakespeare Festival is a professional, non-profit theatre committed to producing Shakespeare’s plays chiefly in the Camden Amphitheatre. At the core of our mission is a passion to make Shakespeare’s plays accessible to contemporary audiences, especially our younger audience. We believe that Shakespeare plays speak to everyone, because of their universal themes, their unforgettable characters and their extraordinary poetry. These plays are produced in association with the Camden Public Library.
Our performances in Bath are produced in conjunction with the Patten Free Library; performances in Monson with Monson Arts and the Center Theatre; and in Bowdoinham with the Town of Bowdoinham.
From Artistic Director Stephen Legawiec
I like to remind myself of a few things about Shakespeare’s theatre:
In Shakespeare’s time, his theatre was the popular entertainment – the television of its day, if you will. The cheapest ticket was the cost of a beer and everyone attended – the royalty and the working class and everyone in between. Most of his audience could not read or write, but the lines of verse were no barrier to understanding. They got everything. The audience needed no footnotes.
Shakespeare wrote about courage and cruelty, love and lust, greed and grace, power and pain. His plays are juicy.
Because Shakespeare’s company would rehearse and open new plays very quickly, they could not make new costumes for each show. They used the same ones for every play because all were set in the “contemporary” era, regardless of their historical period. The characters on stage were dressed like the people in the audience – aristocrats, royalty and commoners. In Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra most likely wore a hoop skirt because that’s what the audience expected a queen to look like.
This is how the plays were done and this is how we like to do them. Immediate and in the present tense. Shakespeare’s plays are all about contemporary life – our life – our deepest longings, our absurdity, our fears, our failings and our noblest aspirations
My favorite quote is when a Shakespeare expert was asked about him in an interview. This is what she said:
“What do you know about Shakespeare?”
“Not nearly as much as he knows about me.”
Stephen Legawiec (Artistic Director) In his 30 years as an artistic director, Legawiec (le-GAHV-yetz) has personally supervised over 100 professional productions as well as directing over 75. He has researched world theatre in Europe and Asia and is a member of the International School of Theatre Anthropology. In 1996 he founded Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble, (now in residence in Bowdoinham, Maine) to explore the relevance of myth and ritual to a contemporary audience. Legawiec is the author of 37 plays, including Red Thread, which won the Backstage West Garland Award for “Los Angeles Production of the Year.”
In addition to his directing and playwriting, Legawiec has designed over 50 sets and composed over a dozen theatrical scores. His productions have been praised by the Los Angeles Times, who called him “one of the theatre’s most adventurous talents.” And the LA Weekly called Legawiec “among the most visionary directors we have.”
In 2009, Legawiec traveled to Wroclaw, Poland as a core artistic participant in The World is a Place of Truth – a UNESCO-sponsored event as part of the International Grotowski Festival. His work has most recently been seen in Trois-Rivieres, Canada, at the Micro-festival of Unfinished Puppetry in 2015 and at the Season of Unusual Theatre in 2017.
His latest Ziggurat work (which he wrote and directed) was Caravan of Dreams in 2022, performed in the sand dunes of the Desert of Maine. The Portland Phoenix called it “a coup of site-specific Maine theater so stunning that I’m astounded it’s never been done before,” and hailed it as one of the highlights of the 2022 theatre season.
Dana Legawiec, (Artistic Associate, Movement Director) is a theatre artist, teaching artist, arts educator, creative facilitator, and nonprofit arts consultant. Her creative practice centers on Physical Theatre and Ensemble-Devised work. Selected directing credits: Balloonacy (Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine); Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom (USM Dept of Theatre), Taming of the Shrew(Camden Shakespeare). She is Artistic Director for the Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble and Executive Director of the Maine Alliance for Arts Education. Dana was named a Creative Community Fellow by National Arts Strategies in recognition of her work making theatre with children.