The Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company was founded in
1998 by Chicago-area actor and director Frank Farrell and a
cast of local West Michigan actors who banded together to
perform Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream outdoors
in the Ottawa County Parks. Since that time, the company
has produced Shakespeare’s works for Western Michigan
audiences each summer, including productions of such plays
as As You Like It, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Two Gentlemen
of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, and Much Ado About
Nothing. Audiences have delighted to see the fairies from a
Midsummer Night’s Dream appearing out of the woods or to
follow Rosalind and Celia into the Forest of Arden in a hiking
production of As You Like It.
In 2002, Pigeon Creek Shakespeare began a new venture,
the Repertory Company. This touring troupe of 5-9 actors
performs programs of scenes from Shakespeare and his
contemporaries in a wide variety of non-traditional
performance venues, including warehouses, churches, retail
stores, restaurants, and bed and breakfasts. The Repertory
Company specializes in adapting its performances to each
specific venue, allowing the architecture and atmosphere of
the particular space to influence its performance. The
Repertory Company also offers classroom performance
workshops for high school and college students studying
both theatre and English Literature.
Since 2004, the Pigeon Creek Shakespeare Company has
been a partner organization of the Grand Haven Area Arts
Council, an umbrella agency for non-profit arts organizations
in the West Michigan area. Through its association with the
GHAAC, Pigeon Creek has acquired the use of a permanent
indoor performance facility, the warehouse building which
houses the GHAAC and will serve as Pigeon Creek’s home
base for years to come.
