If you've been in Michigan for awhile, odds are you've heard of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival before today. If you haven't, well you're fortunate to be reading this! The Michigan Shakespeare Festival dates back to 1995 when it was an outdoor event in Jackson. In 1998 it was rebranded as the Michigan Shakespeare Festival to reflect its statewide popularity.
In 2003, Governor Jennifer Granholm and the Michigan Senate named the MSF the official Shakespeare festival of the state. It would continue to grow until its current level of popularity, and its most recent venue in the Hilberry Gateway Theater in Detroit. The company of actors, known as the MiSFITs, are a group of ten university-trained performers. They stay as true as possible to Shakespeare's original work and style, while also acknowledging modern sensibilities.
This year the company is performing two of my personal Shakespearean favorites, Richard III and Much Ado About Nothing. They are also performing The Beaux' Stratagem: A Comedy of Bad Manners by Irish dramatist George Farquhar.
To put you into a Shakespeare state of mind, here are related offerings from your Commerce Township Community Library, fully dramatized and available on CD: