It’s the winter of discontent for the Shakespeare Festival. When the city brought PACE and its high-voltage rock ’n’ roll to Fair Park, it inadvertently signed the death warrant for the festival at the Band Shell, which for seventeen years has brought Shakespeare to the masses, gratis. The fair verse of the Bard simply cannot compete with the decibels of Bon Jovi. ’”We were told by the park staff last year,” says Dick Orrock, vice president of development for the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas, “that we would have a new site that we could announce at last year’s festival. Obviously that didn’t happen.”
Alas, poor Orrock. That’s not all that didn’t happen. The Shakespeare Festival wanted the city to foot the nearly $60,000 bill for a design firm to do a design and cost study for a new facility, but the City Council balked. And because the festival leaders don’t know where next year’s productions will be performed, which disturbs donors, they say contributions are down by $70,000, a decrease of around 70 percent from last year.
One reason for delay is the city’s slowness in accepting the renegotiated lease with PACE. Part of the new deal states that PACE will pay up to $60,000 to find a new location for the Shakespeare Festival. The City Council delayed approving that new agreement because three council members, Al Gonzalez, Diane Ragsdale. and Al Lipscomb, want more concessions from PACE to help South Dallas, Meanwhile. Shakespeare president Gregory Campbell claims, in a letter to the mayor and council members, that “we are dying!” Campbell says the festival needs the money for the design study, another $100,000 to help pay for the cost of setting up a temporary festival site somewhere in Dallas for the next season, and up to several million dollars of city bond money to pay for building a new permanent site at Samuell-Grand Park.
But Orrock is not above pulling the same panic lever that started the whole Starplex ball rolling-a threat to move out of Dallas. “We’ve turned too much to the City Council to resolve our problems,” Orrock says, adding that it’s time to look for other solutions, such as taking the festival on the road to places such as Irving, Farmers Branch, or Denison. “I hope this will turn into an opportunity to turn this into a Shakespeare Festival for all of North Texas,” he says.
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