Shakespeare in Yosemite

Yosemite National Park, California, USA

Directors: Katherine Steele Brokaw and Paul Prescott

Shakespeare in Yosemite features approximately 20 participants each year, and shows to over 1000 audience members annually (and growing).

This mini festival, founded in 2017, offers free, outdoor, site-specific adaptations of Shakespeare’s productions every April for visitors to Yosemite National Park, California. The festival is offered in celebration of Earth Day and Shakespeare’s birthday and is a collaboration between the National Park Service and our home institutions of University of California Merced, and University of Warwick.

We co-founded the project as a way to apply Shakespeare to the crises of environmental disaster and the exploitation of public and native lands.The shows feature and are co-created by students, local community actors, a few professionals, and – crucially – have a range of inputs from park rangers and staff.

Shakespeare in Yosemite applies place-based Shakespearean theatre in the heart of Yosemite Valley to foreground themes relating to ecological crisis and to prompt individual and collective action in its audience.