Explore Our History

Shakespeare at Winedale began as an English Department course in 1970. It grew out of a meeting between Professor James Ayres ("Doc" to his students) and Miss Ima Hogg, a philanthropist regarded as "the First Lady of Texas."  

Miss Hogg had recently renovated and donated to the University the Winedale Historical Center, a 270-acre area of pasture, woodland and historic pioneer buildings in central Texas. Noting the resemblance of an 1880s hay barn to an Elizabethan theatre, she suggested that Ayres try having his students perform Shakespeare there. He agreed, and Shakespeare at Winedale was born.

As the program grew in size and reputation, it began to attract students from outside the English Department and eventually beyond the University of Texas. The broad spectrum of students served by the program reflects its emphasis on performance as a learning method and a means of self-discovery, rather than an end in itself. 

For more than ifty five years, Shakespeare at Winedale has drawn students with different cultural and academic backgrounds from universities around the United States. Their interests have ranged from medicine, law and physics to music, theatre, and English. They've met every June at Winedale to begin a journey that takes them well beyond their expectations and themselves.

The program has now expanded to include year-round activities, including special programs for younger children such as Camp Shakespeare and our Educational Outreach Program.

The Shakespeare at Winedale program acknowledges the history of the land on which the program is located. 

Please read our Site History for additional information.

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death in 2016, Humanities Texas Humanities Texas Interviewed interviewed Shakespeare at Winedale’s founding director Doc Ayres and its then director James Loehlin, as well as former students of the program.

 

This documentary follows a summer at Camp Shakespeare. Under Doc's direction, young performers are pushed toward exploration, authenticity, and play, and past their own limits, all in the heat of a Texas summer. The film builds to public performances in the barn, where that transformation plays out in front of an audience.

The film also follows Doc in his later years. After handing the Winedale program to his successor James Loehlin, he turned his energy to Camp Shakespeare for middle-school students, opening the barn doors to a new generation of "Winedalers." Along the way, it traces Winedale's expansive reach across Texas and the wider Shakespeare world.

Who is Doc Ayres? And why does a summer Shakespeare program affect students and audiences so deeply?

Add body text in this space.