Every summer Classic City Art is pleased to present a work of Shakespeare on the stage absolutely free of charge to the audience. That's right, we just throw the doors open and let people walk right in. There are a myriad of reasons why we do this but here's the best two examples.

First off, producers Will Leamon and Amy Wright are both Athens-born members of local community theatre. Between the two of them is almost thirty years of experience in just about every community theatre in Athens. As lover's of Shakespeare, we feel it's tremendously important to not only stage his work but to guarantee that EVERYONE in town has an opportunity to see it.

The second reason is a little more ephemeral. It's our belief that one cannot begin to truly understand a Shakespeare play without actually working on the play. Reading the scripts and seeing productions is of course helpful, but the real insight begins in rehearsal and truly blossoms with the last performance. With the Summer's Free Shakespeare show we hope to provide an annual, intense study group devoted to exploring Shakespeare in earnest. It truly is a learning experience. Therefore we feel that it just kind of stinks to put in all that intense work and then charge people to see the results. Instead we like to simply invite anyone who's interested to come out and take advantage of our shared experience. The feeling is pretty hard to describe but trust us, when you get there it's pretty incredible..