On a muggy June afternoon in London, patrons young and old filled all three tiers of wooden benches at Shakespeare’s Globe theater and stood 12 rows deep on the ground before the stage. They’d come to see “Romeo and Juliet,” a play so much a part of the collective consciousness that you wouldn’t think another retelling would generate such a crowd. Yet, here we all were, paying between £5 and £80 to watch the classic tragedy of teens in love — this time set in an old-timey American western town.
Shakespeare’s Globe mounts productions year-round and runs an extensive education program. In the U.S., however, Shakespeare productions are largely a summertime affair, with warm weather performances of the bard’s works as much a staple as fireworks on the fourth of July. Cities and towns around America host Shakespeare in the Park summer series and productions in theaters — and have been doing so for 90 years. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the nation’s oldest ongoing series, dates back to 1935. San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre was built the same year; it launched a Summer Shakespeare Festival in 1949. In 1954, legendary producer Joseph Papp founded what is generally considered the nation’s first outdoor summer Shakespeare festival, which evolved into today’s regular summer series in New York City’s Central Park. Cedar City Utah did its first summer Shakespeare in 1962. The Houston Shakespeare Festival has been running since 1975.
This is a tough time for arts organizations across the U.S., but for lovers of Shakespeare, the play goes on, with donors continuing to invest in new performances of canonical works. One notable feature about funding for Shakespeare in the Park as a category is that it tends to draw support from a combination of major foundations, local big names and grassroots enthusiasts — including, in some cases, audience members sitting on actual grass, reaching into their wallets for cash at the end of a show. It’s an example of organic democratized philanthropy, and one practiced long before the term became trendy; Shakespeare himself was a funder of the original Globe Theatre, alongside other members of the acting company he was part of, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.
All of this leads us at IP to ask, “Who, exactly, is funding Shakespeare today?” And another question, perhaps as old as Shakespeare himself, “What doth commend it so?”
Shakespeare’s Globe revived by an American actor
Let’s start with the Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Today’s structure is actually a 20th-century reconstruction of the 16th-century original, complete with oak beams, open roof and those hard wooden benches. Its existence is due to American actor Sam Wanamaker, who reportedly was captivated by seeing a reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair when he was 14. A few years later, Wanamaker got his first acting gig, performing Shakespeare at the Great Lakes Exposition in Cleveland, Ohio, where he saw another replica of the Globe building. But while visiting London a decade later, he was dismayed to discover that the actual Globe was no longer standing. As he later said, “I was particularly saddened, as by this time, the concept of Globe reconstructions had taken a stronghold in the U.S., and this was part of and contributed to a great revival and interest in Shakespeare and America’s English language heritage.”
Wanamaker founded the Shakespeare Globe Trust in 1970 and spent the next two decades-plus researching and fundraising to bring the Globe back. Prince Philip was a major patron and supporter of Wanamaker’s vision for more than 40 years, until his death in 2021. Today’s theater opened in 1997 next to the Thames River in Southwark, a few blocks from the original site. During intermissions, playgoers stand around outside, gazing across the river at St. Paul’s Cathedral, eating ice cream and “crisps.”
The U.K.-registered charity has the backing of nearly two-dozen foundations and trusts from both sides of the Atlantic. These include the Garfield Weston Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Wolfson Foundation, Foyle Foundation, Linbury Trust and Thompson Family Charitable Trust. Deutsche Bank is listed as a Major Partner, and Greymoor Homes, Bloomberg and IG are corporate partners. But as in the U.S., many theaters here are struggling, as funding for the arts has decreased significantly in the U.K. in recent years. As Shakespeare’s Globe says on its website: “After the most challenging period in our charity’s history, we still need our supporters to help us recover. Please donate to help fund the future of Shakespeare’s Globe.” Everyday enthusiasts remain part of its survival, both through one-off ticket sales and a membership program offering entry points from £60 to £5000 a year.
All the world’s a funder; Shakespeare as a naturally occurring DEI initiative in L.A.
Across the Atlantic and across the country, more than a thousand people sprawled out on picnic blankets and sat on low beach chairs in a woodsy dell in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park in July, settling in for the final seasonal performance of “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” staged by the Independent Shakespeare Company, or “Indie Shakes.” Founded by actors (and spouses) David Melville and Melissa Chalsma in New York City in 1998, then relocated to L.A. in 2001, Indie Shakes quickly found an audience among the city’s diverse residents. It now draws some 40,000 people to the park each summer for free performances of one or two plays by Shakespeare, or sometimes one of his contemporaries. Productions often include Shakespeare’s songs set to music by Melville or ones newly composed by him, and generally feature Mellville, Chalsma and Indie Shakes’ frequently appearing actors, along with new ones.
Being in L.A. rather than New York has shaped the productions, said Chalsma, in part due to the audience. “There was this blue ocean of possibility when we came here,” she said. “We could invent something here that I don’t think we could have done in New York. I have done a lot of regional Shakespeare in my career and everything in Los Angeles feels a lot more fluid, very permeable. Our audience in the park, a lot of them don’t self-define as theater goers. About 30% are lower income. They are raucous, exuberant, really, really, really diverse across all metrics.”
They also contribute. After each show, staff members with orange buckets stroll through the sea of people sprawled out on blankets, taking donations. “Those donations are modest but significant because of the amount of people we serve. And some people also come up to us and make a large donation,” said Indie Shakes Development Director Nicolás Bejarano, who joined the group in April after working at Long Beach Opera and then American Youth Symphony. “Philanthropy for this reflects the population of Los Angeles. We get a lot of people who send us $10 a month.”
Indie Shakes also has major donors, including the Ahmanson Foundation, the Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation, The John C. Hench Foundation, Monimos Foundation, Perenchio Foundation, Rosenthal Family Foundation, Rossi Family Foundation and the Shakespeare Fund of Theater League of Kansas City. Bajarano sees the wide donor base as reflective of the nonprofit’s reach. “Working in opera, you see a lot of wealth compared to what the population of L.A. looks like. Or take the donors for classical music or in large theater organizations; there is an over-representation of millionaires, billionaires and the upper class. It’s great that they’re contributing and they do a lot, but everyone contributes to this. It’s supported by the community and is being provided to the community in a way that a lot of arts are not anymore. Other arts have become prohibitively expensive.”
South of L.A., San Diego’s Old Globe has captured the largesse of one of the most Shakespearean of U.S. funder stories. Former actor turned monk-in-training Roy Cockrum famously won the Powerball lottery in 2014 and used part of his $259 million winnings to support nonprofit theaters, including San Diego’s Old Globe, which runs a summer Shakespeare series. The Roy Cockrum Foundation donated approximately $1.8 million to the San Diego Globe over several years to support a large-scale, two-part adaptation of Shakespeare’s three “Henry VI” plays. The San Diego Globe’s 2025 Summer Shakespeare Series features “All’s Well That Ends Well” and “The Comedy of Errors,” funded by government grants, foundations and individual patrons.
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Shakespeare in Central Park: the most iconic summer series gets an update
In New York City, some 80,000 people head to Central Park’s Delacorte Theater each summer for the season’s two productions, where Shakespeare in the Park remains a staple. The Delacorte Theater, named after publishing magnate and philanthropist George T. Delacorte Jr., who donated funds for its construction as a gift to the people of New York City, is no Globe. As New York Times architecture writer Michael Kimmelman recently wrote, the theater, “from day one was a glorified, rickety high-school grandstand, with water leaking into ramshackle dressing rooms and raccoons nesting backstage. Watching great actors and directors put on “Hamlet” there was roughly akin to consuming truffled langoustine on the L train.”
In yet another sign of Shakespeare’s enduring appeal, donors recently contributed to a much-needed, $85 million renovation of the Delacorte through the Public Theater’s Forever Fund, a multi-year capital campaign. The list of donors and foundation supporters is long and includes the Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, Ford Foundation, Barbara and Amos Hostetter, Howard Gilman Foundation, the Jerome L. Greene Foundation and others. The city kicked in about half the cost for the upgrade, and New York State Assembly Member Daniel O’Donnell added $1 million. The new space can accommodate 1,864 theatergoers, and includes important back-of-house upgrades and wider seats, wheelchair access and better bathrooms.
After closing for 18 months, the Delacorte reopened this August with a staging of “Twelfth Night” featuring celebrity actors Lupita Nyong’o, Peter Dinklage, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Sandra Oh.
The Iago to all this Shakespeare support: NEA cuts, fires, the economy
This administration’s sweeping NEA cuts have affected many theaters, including those that do Shakespeare. Marin Shakespeare Company in California lost two $20,000 NEA grants. Maryland’s Chesapeake Shakespeare Company lost a $50,000 NEA grant for its mobile outdoor performance unit that brought theater to more than 8,000 people in a dozen Maryland neighborhoods last year. New York City’s Classical Theatre of Harlem suddenly found its $60,000 NEA grant rescinded; it had planned to use the money for a production of the contemporary play “Memnon,” as part of its annual Free Uptown Shakespeare in the Park series. The Public Theater’s $35,000 NEA grant for fiscal year 2025 was cancelled.
While this money mattered, it will not shut down summer Shakespeare, due in part to ongoing private support. As Public Theater Executive Director Patrick Willingham said, the loss of funding for free Shakespeare programs like the Mobile Unit and Public Works “isn’t the end of the world,” given the theatre’s budget. But for smaller companies and the field at large, the “downstream philanthropic danger is as bad as this rescission.” Audiences are definitely hurt. Classical Theatre of Harlem, for example, is the only professional theatre company above 96th Street in Manhattan dedicated to bringing classical theater, revivals and new works to the community.
Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, meanwhile, has support from a range of funders including the Paul M. Angel Family Foundation, Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation, Theater League Kansas City and others. It also won an Arts Innovation and Management grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies in 2018. And in another sign of the lasting appeal of Shakespeare, the Classical Theatre of Harlem announced several new, high-profile board members: actors Ethan Hawke and Billy Crudup, and art consultant Duncan M. Webb.
Indie Shakes gets about 20% of its support from government grants, including the NEA and the City of Los Angeles. At first, the nonprofit didn’t bother applying for an NEA grant for this summer, due to what looked like overly restrictive anti-DEI requirements. But it has since learned that these strictures have softened and that the theater has been recommended for an NEA grant, smaller than in the past, but still something.
Audiences in L.A. also are a little smaller than last year. This may be due to members of the Hispanic community staying home for fear of ICE raids. Or it could be the fact that this season’s plays are less well known. Or maybe people are too discouraged to go out. “America is very pessimistic right now,” said Bejarano. “Everything is depressed. People are cautious. There is this general sense of uncertainty and that never helps the arts, even a free thing.”
Many Angelenos are still regrouping after the fires and the entertainment strikes that started two years ago and concluded a year ago, added Chalsma. “The knock-on effects are still going. All of those little diminishments add up to a really stressful fundraising picture,” she said.
Still, the company remains committed to its mission to bring Shakespeare to the people. “We are here for people who can’t afford a ticket. It’s all free. The parking is free. In these moments, this is when this is so special,” said Bejarano. “Maybe they will never be a major donor, but everyone in our community deserves these life-affirming, amazing experiences.”
As to why people still love Shakespeare? Indie Shakes’ mission statement explains some of the appeal: “Our work is based in the profound humanity of Shakespeare’s writing and we seek to reveal the commonalities of the human experience.”
