Hailed as “one of the world’s three great Shakespearean theatres” by The Economist and as “the nation’s foremost Shakespeare company” by The Wall Street Journal, STC won more than 50 Helen Hayes Awards in the 1990s and 2000s, including seven awards to artistic director Michael Kahn. The long list of notable actors who have appeared with the company includes Elizabeth Ashley, Pat Carroll, Hal Holbrook, Stacy Keach, Patrick Stewart, and Paul Winfield.

Founded in 1985 and initially housed in the Folger Library, the Shakespeare Theatre Company lives up to its name by producing three plays by the Bard every year.  It fills out the rest of the regular season with work by other great dramatists, from Aeschylus to Tennessee Williams.

The company also highlights five more plays each season through its Monday-night ReDiscovery series, a reading series that spotlights seldom-produced works by the famed (for example, Oscar Wilde), the overshadowed (Ben Jonson), and the obscure (Alfred de Musset). The Shakespeare Theatre’s most beloved offering is the annual Free For All, a set of 10 free performances of one of the theater’s Shakespeare productions, performed each summer at the Carter Barron Amphitheatre in Rock Creek Park.