Shakespeare’s Associates, Inc., producers of Livermore Shakespeare Festival and The Bothwell Series, is part of a fledgling but thriving cultural community in the Tri-Valley.  From Livermore’s Art Walk and Livermore Valley Opera to Dublin’s Concert Series and Pleasanton’s ever expanding Civic Arts programs, artists enrich and enliven the greater community.  Wineries regularly bring in musical and visual artists to enhance the ambience. Livermore's 500-seat Bankhead Theater opened in October, invigorating performing arts audiences with live performance and encouraging collaborations such as The Bard, Baritones and Bassoons, our collaboration with the Amador-Livermore Symphony and Livermore Valley Opera.  The Tri-Valley community clearly appreciates and supports the arts.

Theater, too, is a community, a community of professional artists working alongside local teens, tweens and adults, providing models for creative team work and inspiring them to take risks, to assume responsibility, and to find joy in their work. It’s a community of artists in a positive work environment examining great works of literature and bringing them to life. It’s an office setting with volunteers sharing local news while sticking labels as the actors rehearse in the next room. It’s a conversation held between the artistic director and a patron during a chance meeting at the farmers’ market.

Theater is a dialogue, concerning the greatest issues of our time and the lasting struggles of what it means to be human. Theater is a relationship that challenges us to discern things in startling new ways, to feel deeply, to consider, and to laugh it all off. It is a relationship that challenges us to be the best that we can be.

The artists, staff and volunteers of Shakespeare’s Associates have much to be proud of artistically; the four productions we have worked on garnered overwhelmingly positive response from audience and critics alike.  But in the true tradition of “many hands make light work,” a not-for-profit theater like ours needs support – support of all kinds and in abundance!  We need volunteers who will roll up their sleeves and extend the capacity of the very small staff.  We need leadership at the board level to liaison with various segments of our community to solicit their participation. We need funders and fundraisers to bring in the minimal 33 1/3% of our budget that must be raised so we qualify as a not-for-profit.

Our goal is to put into place the systems for regular development work, build relationships with local funders (individual, corporate and foundation), and to raise the profile of the organization in the community.  In order to stabilize the organization and set the stage for growth, we must raise $50,000 over the next six months to secure one full-time summer position for an artistic director and one part-time year-round staff position for a business manager.  Securing these positions will ensure

Shakespeare’s Associates’ exciting  season of two plays: a spring show, Art, at the Bothwell Center, and a summer show, The Comedy of Errors, at Retzlaff Estate Winery (produced in conjunction with the Theatre Arts Department of University of the Pacific), as well as summer educational programs for tweens, teens, and adults at the Bothwell Center.

Much is in place – the excitement is palpable. We need your participation to reach our goals.

Lisa A. Tromovitch
Producing Artistic Director