Photos: Hudson Valley Shakespeare Celebrates the Opening of the Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center

Hudson Valley Shakespeare's Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center is officially open, following a ribbon cutting ceremony this morning in Garrison, NY, which marked the completion of a six-year-long project to give the company its first-ever permanent home and theater. See photos here!

Designed to immerse audiences and actors in the rich landscape of the Hudson Valley, the Scripps Theater Center’s unique indoor-outdoor setting for the company’s open-air productions offers an unparalleled theater experience. With a focus on ecological restoration and climate-smart investment in green design, the new campus is unique in the wider cultural landscape of the American theater, bringing together cultural placemaking, educational programming, community engagement, and environmental sustainability onto one spectacular site.

Founded in 1987 with an outdoor production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Manitoga, Hudson Valley Shakespeare moved the following summer to Boscobel House and Gardens, where its mainstage season was performed under a seasonal open-air tent for decades. In 2022, HVS moved to its current 98-acre campus in Garrison, NY, conveyed to the company by Christopher Davis.

Led by the renowned architecture and urban design practice Studio Gang, the design of the Scripps Theater extends the theater’s year-round functionality, improves circulation across the campus, and enables a wider range of programming. Featuring a curved, timber-framed grid shell, the new theater provides improved rehearsal, performance, education, and amenity spaces; expanded accessibility for more diverse audiences; and technical additions that create new opportunities for HVS productions. The theater’s natural material palette and curved structure help the architecture integrate with the surrounding landscape. Positioning nature at the forefront of the theater’s creative work, the stage’s proscenium arch frames iconic views of the Hudson Highlands, creating the natural backdrop HVS productions are known for having. Adjacent to the 6,800-square-foot, 451-seat theater is an additional 10,000-square-foot area with dressing rooms, a green room, wardrobe facilities, and offices, as well as separate spaces for concessions and public washrooms.

Beginning with a comprehensive master plan for the 98-acre site in 2020, landscape architects Nelson Byrd Woltz designed the campus around habitat restoration and a poetic arrival experience. Supporting HVS’s commitment to integrating nature into the life of the theater, the campus design includes fourteen acres of new plantings that reinvigorate the site’s biodiversity and draw visitors into the Hudson Valley landscape. Accessible paths wind through native meadows, arriving at sweeping views over the Hudson and the magnificent cliffs of the Wey-Gat (“Wind Gate”) —a prelude to the theater. Ample picnic lawns face the stage and the river.

The architecture and landscape design work together to place both art and the environment center stage for generations to come. Integrated sustainability strategies, including the use of low-carbon mass timber, rooftop solar panels, rainwater harvesting and reuse, and restored native grasses and wetlands that support biodiversity, have put the theater on track to receive LEED Platinum certification and to become the first purpose-built, open-air theater in the United States to achieve this level of certification. HVS is also committed to achieving carbon neutrality for its campus by 2040.

Additional design and consulting were  provided by Thornton Tomasetti (structural engineering), Art Massif (mass timber), Fisher Dachs Associates (theater), Threshold Acoustics (acoustics/AV), Badey & Watson (civil engineer), Buro Happold (MEP, FP, IT, Security Engineering and Sustainability) Flyleaf Creative Inc. (signage/wayfinding), Tillotson Design Associates (lighting), Tectonic Engineering (geotechnical engineer), and SGH.

HVS broke ground for the construction project on September 25, 2024, with Consigli Construction Co., Inc. serving as Construction Manager.

In recognition of the leadership campaign support from Wendy Scripps, the new theater has been named in honor of her father Samuel H. Scripps (1927-2007), a visionary philanthropist whose passion for theater and dance profoundly shaped American culture. From an early age, Sam developed a deep love for Shakespeare, which would guide his lifelong commitment to the arts. With his wife, Luise Elcanness Scripps (1927-2015), Sam played a pivotal role in promoting and supporting dance and theater across the United States and around the globe and the SHS Foundation has been instrumental in advancing the performing arts, and continues to be a key supporter of theater and dance institutions today. Hudson Valley Shakespeare is deeply honored to name our theater in Sam’s memory, in recognition of his and Luise’s lifelong enthusiasm for Shakespeare, and their devotion to the artistic community of the Hudson Valley region. Hudson Valley Shakespeare is profoundly grateful to Wendy Scripps, to Richard Feldman, President of the SHS Foundation, and to the entire Scripps Family for their leadership support of this project.

The project was awarded a combined total of $19.5 million in public funding from federal and state sources, including $10 million from the New York State Council on the Arts, one of the largest cultural capital grants ever made by the agency; $3.5 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for riparian watershed restoration; $3.25 million from Empire State Development, as recommended by the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council, including designation as a Priority Project for the region; $1.5 million from the New York State Department of Education, with thanks to Governor Kathy Hochul; $500,000 from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Environmental Protection Fund; $534,000 from the U.S. Department of Education; and $250,000 in capital grants from former New York State Assemblymember Sandra Galef, New York State Assemblymember Dana Levenberg, and New York State Senator Pete Harckham.

The theater will be open to the public for the first time this Sunday, May 17 for a Community Day open house from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM. This is the community’s opportunity to explore, take tours of the new theater center, and get a first taste of what it’ll feel like to enjoy a live performance from the new seats. The afternoon will also include tastes of HVS’s pre-show programming, including a brand-new Best in Show, in partnership with local shelters; an Overtures session with jug band The Salt Cracker Crazies; and a Prologue conversation about Highland Lights with Alex and Sophia from Processional Arts Workshop. For more information, visit hvshakespeare.org/community-day.

The first season in the Scripps Theater Center will begin on June 10, and will feature William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, directed by Miriam Laube (OSF’s Much Ado About Nothing) and featuring original music by Amanda Dehnert (HVS’s Love’s Labor’s Lost); Shakespeare’s King Lear, directed by Artistic Director Davis McCallum (HVS’s The Matchmaker) and featuring Kurt Rhoads in the title role; and a new production of Boublil and Schӧnberg’s Les Misérables, presented by arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI) and by arrangement with CAMERON MACKINTOSH LTD, directed by Jenn Thompson (HVS’s Into the Woods) with music supervision by Amanda Morton (Operation Mincemeat).

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