All’s Well That Ends Well at American Shakespeare Center

The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Free For All is a much-loved Washington tradition, offering free performances of a Shakespearean classic to the general public. STC is thrilled to kick off our 26th season with All’s Well That Ends Well.

Each summer, with the help of numerous community-minded sponsors, the Shakespeare Theatre Company presents a series of free Shakespeare performances. Started in 1991 to bring free Shakespeare to new and diverse audiences in the Washington metropolitan area, the Free For All has presented Shakespeare under the stars to more than 560,000 area residents.

Students for Shakespeare, launched in 1996, has attracted thousands of area public school students to the Free For All by providing transportation and free t-shirts, fun books and drawings for scholarship savings bonds. The Shakespeare Theatre Company Free For All's unique contribution to the community was recognized with the Washington Post Distinguished Service Award in 1992 and the 1997 Public Humanities Award presented by the Humanities Council of Washington, D.C.

The Shakespeare Theatre Company Free For All is a highlight of Washington's theatre season, a traditional outing that attracts the city's most diverse audience. Championed by Kahn and Shakespeare Theatre Company founding chairman R. Robert Linowes, and made possible with invaluable support from The Washington Post, Philip L. Graham Fund and a committed group of community-minded sponsors, the Free For All proved an enormous success its first year, attracting more than 2,500 theatregoers each night. Succeeding summers have seen the Free For All build on its early promise, with audiences flocking to see some of Shakespeare's greatest plays—Much Ado about Nothing, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Henry Vand King Lear—performed by the Shakespeare Theatre Company's actors and such guest artists as Sabrina LeBeauf, Kelly McGillis and Harry Hamlin.

Former Chair of the National Endowment of the Arts Jane Alexander, a frequent attendee at Free For All productions, enthuses about the program's importance to Washington: "I remember once when I was at the Free For All, there was a couple sitting next to me with a very, very young child, and I began to talk to them and I asked: 'Why are you here?' And they said, 'Where else would we have the opportunity to introduce our child to Shakespeare and be able to afford it?'"

Alexander sums up the sentiments shared by Kahn, the Shakespeare Theatre Company and the many generous individuals, foundations and corporations who make the Free For All possible each year: "The Free For All is a wonderful success for everybody involved ... not just for the Shakespeare Theatre Company, but for the entire city."