Mission
The mission of Shakespeare at Notre Dame, under which the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival operates, is to establish Notre Dame nationally and internationally as a center for the study of Shakespeare in performance.
The program seeks to...
- provide its undergraduates and graduates, the local community of South Bend and the wider region with opportunities to see Shakespeare productions, both professional and student, of the highest possible quality;
- provide students with regular opportunities to perform Shakespeare both independent of and in collaboration with professional performers and directors, in order to provide students with a full range of experience of amateur and professional production in the course of the academic year;
- educate students in the pleasures of watching Shakespeare (on stage and on film) so as to inculcate a lifetime habit of seeing Shakespeare in performance;
- provide courses at an undergraduate level and beyond, for students in all years of study and from the widest possible range of disciplines, to explore Shakespeare in performance;
- support the full range of courses studying Shakespeare throughout the University;
- provide at a master's and doctoral level, through MA/MFA and Ph.D. courses, the opportunity for students to train both as scholar-critics and as theatre-workers through the study of Shakespeare in performance; and
- support collection development in the University library to support both doctoral work and advanced research by permanent and visiting faculty.