BY LAUREN ROTHERING
Arts and Entertainment Editor
The Great River Shakespeare Festival (GRSF) recently received an additional grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board for the 2010-11 season. The additional grant for the festival is worth $22,856, in addition to $15,993 already granted by the Minnesota State Arts Board. The entire two-year grant is worth over $77,000.
The GRSF is held in Winona each summer. Since its inception in 2004, the festival has produced some of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays, including Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth. In addition, the festival has an Apprentice Acting and Intern Company production, which consists entirely of actors still in college or conservatory school.
Last season, the apprentice production was a modern interpretation of Hamlet, in which the lead role of Hamlet was split between four actors.
The 2010-11 season will feature Shakespeare’s Othello and Comedy of Errors and, for the first time, a non- Shakespearian play, The Daly News. Written by GRSF founding company member and veteran actor, Jonathan Gillard Daly, the show was performed in front of a sold-out crowd for one night last season. This season it will take the main stage.
The additional funding is a result of the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, which was passed in Minnesota on Nov. 4, 2008. The amendment increased sales tax by three-eighths of a percent to further fund clean water, lands and arts initiative. Approximately 19.75 percent of the profits from this new amendment will go toward funding the arts. A predicted $48 million will be generated in 2010 alone.
The 2010 season, the seventh in GRSF’s production history, will begin on June 23, 2010.
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