Shakespeare
at Winedale
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Founded by Professor James B. Ayres on the belief that the best way to study Shakespeare’s plays is to perform them, Shakespeare at Winedale offers a unique opportunity to explore these rich and complex texts through the creative act of play. Shakespeare at Winedale is a program of the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts at University of Texas at Austin, but many of its activities are centered on the Winedale Historical Center near Round Top, Texas, where for more than fifty-five years students and audiences have come to encounter Shakespeare’s living art. The program is currently directed by Dr. Katie Brokaw.
University Program
The Shakespeare at Winedale University Program is dedicated to the study of Shakespeare’s plays through performance. These courses, offered each spring and summer, provide students with an educational and theatrical experience of great intensity. Students from disciplines across the university are able to explore find their best collaborative, creative, and resilient selves through these courses. At Winedale, students live and work in a peaceful pastoral setting and perform in a century-old hay barn that has been converted into an Elizabethan-style theatre. The wooded landscape provides a special kind of magic and a uniquely focused intensity for the exploration of Shakespeare’s plays. The semester-long spring course brings students out to Winedale for three weekends, while the summer course has students living at Winedale all summer.
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Camp Shakespeare
Camp Shakespeare is a two-week residential summer camp for young people, ages 11-16, dedicated to exploring Shakespeare through performance. “Exploring” and “performance” are key words here. They suggest that we are finding our way not through rehearsals but performances. Every moment is performance. Campers are challenged to play out their interpretative discoveries on stage.
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Kate Taylor
Outreach
Shakespeare at Winedale Outreach is a Language Arts enrichment program that provides opportunities for meaningful learning and academic excellence for Texas schoolchildren in grades K-12, with a special focus on both emerging and advanced readers in grades 3 through 8, and on students in low-income communities.
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Upcoming performances & tickets
2027 Shakespare at Winedale Season:
Women and Power
Students will study and perform plays that place women at the center of questions about authority, desire, and identity, with an unexpected through-line for three of them: the collaborative hand of Thomas Middleton.
April 22-24, the spring class takes on the vice and virtue of Measure for Measure, not performed on the Winedale stage since 2007. This dark comedy’s urban themes are consistent with the interests of its probable reviser, Middleton.
The summer class continues tracing Middleton's editorial fingerprints while exploring women both supernatural and all-too-human in Macbeth. The delights of love and gender play are featured in the perennial Winedale favorite, As You Like It. Finally, students take on Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s city comedy The Roaring Girl, never before performed at Winedale and featuring an unforgettably spunky cross-dressing heroine.
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Tickets to all events can be reserved at our Eventbrite page.
You can also learn about Accessibility at our events and Places to Stay Near Winedale. If you have questions about attending a Shakespeare at Winedale event, please check out our Plan Your Visit FAQ.
STAY IN TOUCH!
We invite interested students, teachers and audience members—of all ages and backgrounds—to learn more about Shakespeare at Winedale by exploring this site. You can find out more about what we're up to by following us on Facebook and Instagram, or by joining our email list. If you still have questions, please feel free to contact us!
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We invite interested students, teachers and audience members—of all ages and backgrounds—to learn more about Shakespeare at Winedale by exploring this site. You can find out more about what we're up to by following us on Facebook and Instagram, or by joining our email list. If you still have questions, please feel free to contact us!
Shakespeare at Winedale
Katherine Steele Brokaw, Director
katherine.brokaw@austin.utexas.edu
512-471-4726