User:Live4Arts/Draft-Hamptons Shakespeare Festival

Hamptons Shakespeare Festival is a nonprofit regional theater company founded in 1996, which presents free outdoor productions and educational programs.

Programs
Hamptons Shakespeare Festival primarily presents Shakespeare's plays on the South Fork of Long Island in venues which have included Montauk County Park, Agawam Park (Southampton), Amagansett Square, Fort Pond House (Montauk), the Montauk Playhouse, and Guild Hall of East Hampton, as well as in schools and theaters in other locations on Long Island and in New York City. Some of its productions have included:
 * Much Ado About Nothing set in the post-World War II era with a jazz score, called "one of the best productions of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING that I've ever seen" by Robert Zukerman, Theatre Program Director at the New York State Council on the Arts;
 * Taming of the Shrew: Extreme, which moved Off-Broadway to The Duke on 42nd Street;
 * Twelfth Night featuring a sand box in three-quarter round; and,
 * A Midsummer Night's Dream with Everett Quinton as "Bottom", set in "a tawdry old amusement park, with roller coaster and Ferris wheel skeletons beneath a moon with red and yellow lights."

The company also presents play readings, such as Joe Pintauro's Metropolitan Operas: Four Little Ironic Plays about Life Off Broadway and James Goldman's The Lion in Winter, starring Daniel Davis and Lisa Harrow, directed by Jesse Berger.

Its educational programs include Camp Shakespeare workshops, children's matinees, school residencies, and Theater-for-Young-Audiences productions.

Notable artists
Other actors who have performed with Hamptons Shakespeare Festival include Remy Auberjonois, Torquil Campbell, Jordan Bridges, Danielle Schneider, Richard B. Watson, Demosthenes Chrysan, Claudia Besso, David Paluck, J. Richey Nash, Kathryn Merry, Margot White, Amy Prosser, Gerard Doyle, Edward O'Blenis, Kameron Steele, Lucy Boyle, Catherine Eaton, and Patrick Tully.

Reality-television star Ethan Zohn appeared on video recording in the company's Taming of the Shrew: Extreme.

The company has held events at the Montauk homes of photographers Richard Avedon and Peter Beard, featuring performances by Dick Cavett, actors Mercedes Ruehl, Roy Scheider, Eli Wallach, and Anne Jackson, and playwrights Edward Albee, Marsha Norman, and Joe Pintauro.