Tennessee Shakespeare Company

Tennessee Shakespeare Company (TSC) is a professional 501(c)(3) theatre and education organization which performs the plays of William Shakespeare seasonally; performs classical and Southern writers seasonally; and provides innovative, year‐round educational and training programming. TSC was founded in 2008 by Memphian Dan McCleary as the city’s first and only professional, classical theatre and education organization. TSC has produced 40 site-specific plays and events for over 45,000 patrons in its nine years. Its innovative Education program has reached 120 schools across seven states, totaling over 132,000 student interactions. TSC now performs and teaches every month of the year, and annually plays to over 10,000 patrons annually, tours to 5‐6 southern states with its education shows, and is welcomed into at least 80 schools. TSC’s education program has achieved a high regional and national profile. The program has been endorsed by Shelby County Schools, Germantown Municipal Schools, Collierville Municipal schools, and the National Endowment for the Arts (one of just 40 U.S. theatres to be acknowledged). TSC expanded its performance programming this season to include To Kill a Mockingbird at Hutchison School, Much Ado About Nothing at Dixon Gallery & Gardens, The Comedy of Errors at the University of Memphis, The Winter’s Tale and The Merchant of Venice at the Hunt and Polo Club, two Southern Exposure salons with Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty, The Romeo and Juliet Project in Title One Memphis schools, the U.S. schools tour of Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits, the Broadway Gala at GPAC, as well as scores of school playshops, matinees, and summer camps. The Romeo and Juliet Project is an in‐depth, four‐session residency that takes place in Memphis area high schools during a student's Freshman year. For the 2016‐17 school year, TSC was invited by the Shelby County Schools system into 16 schools, serving over 6,000 students. The Project employs education activities that engage the entire Freshman population of a partner school. Classrooms are transformed into playing spaces to change students' expectations and reception of the material. The residency begins with an intimate, 90‐minute performance of the play and continues with three sessions that engage the students in playing three different parts of the play. The positive impact on the students’ grades, compassion level, desire to remain in school, engagement in continued exploration of classical texts, and their rehearsed ability to walk away from potentially life-threatening situations in their own lives is quantifiable and remarkable. TSC also teaches adjudicated youth at Hope Academy, in lock-up at Jail East, children with special needs, and military veterans. TSC, with an annual operating budget of $700,000, annually is supported by more than 300 individuals, corporations, foundations, and granting organizations in Memphis, the state, and the United States. This contributed revenue represents approximately 45% of TSC’s annual budget. TSC is in the process of negotiating a Purchase and Sale Agreement with Ballet Memphis for its 18,000 sq./ft. Memphis facility on Trinity Road near Germantown Road for $1.9 million. TSC’s contributions to the Memphis community include: • Sustainability as the first Shakespeare theatre to survive in the history of Memphis, • The only year-round, professional, union theatre in Memphis and the Mid-South, • Employment of one of the country’s highest ratios of multi-racial/gender classical casts, • One of only three professional, union Shakespeare theaters in the Southeast U.S., • In-school education programming that annually increases students’ compassion, desire to stay in school, Language Arts grades, and rehearsed ability to walk away from potentially life-threatening experiences.