SHORT HISTORY

Having worked for several summers with students attending speech and drama camps, founder Jeffrey Stegall decided that the students he was coaching would benefit from seeing a live stage production during their week at camp. Pooling the talents of colleagues and former students, he directed Love’s Labor’s Lost in 1995, and Summer Shakespeare was born.

For the next three summers, two more of the Bard’s comedies and The Importance of Being Earnest were presented. After taking a few summers off, Summer Shakespeare was reborn in 2004 and has been growing ever since. Their shortened Shakespeare adaptations have become the highlight of the summer season for many Greenville residents.

In 2008 and 2009, the Brave New World Theatre Workshops were held in downtown Greenville, SC. This and subsequent educational endeavors in area schools led to Summer Shakespeare’s incorporation as The Greenville Shakespeare Company, a nonprofit organization.

Summer Shakespeare’s preferred venue is Performance Hall, the cozy black box theater on the campus of Bob Jones University. However, 2011 promises to bring the magic of Summer Shakespeare to downtown Greenville. Stay tuned for further updates! The 2010 production of Twelfth Night was Summer Shakespeare’s eleventh production.

CURRENT CREATIVE TEAM

Jeffrey Stegall, Artistic Director

Jeffrey Stegall, Director/Designer
Jeffrey has been directing, designing, and acting for over twenty years. After earning a master’s degree in Performance Studies at Bob Jones University, he studied design at the University of Oklahoma and acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory in New York City. He has played over thirty of Shakespeare’s roles including Hamlet, Henry V, Malvolio, Richard II, Touchstone, Caliban, Costard, and Don Armado. Summer Shakespeare audiences saw him most recently as the yellow-stockinged fool Malvolio in the 2010 production of Twelfth Night. His directing and design credits include nearly forty plays and operas. Jeffrey is founder of The Greenville Shakespeare Company, a non-profit organization in the Upstate of South Carolina and surrounding areas.

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Ron Pyle, Lighting Designer

Ron Pyle, Lighting Designer
Ron has been acting and designing for thirty-five years in educational theatre. He has played numerous Shakespearean roles including the title role in Hamlet, Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, Claudius in Hamlet, Gloucester in King Lear, and Prospero in The Tempest. Ron is currently Artistic Director for student productions in the Dramatic Arts Department at Bob Jones University where he teaches acting and stage lighting. He has performed his one-man show, The Seed of the Woman, at over twenty churches and schools. This past year Ron was the lighting designer for Driving Miss Daisy and Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure at Greenville’s Centre Stage. Ron has been the resident lighting designer for Summer Shakespeare for seven years.
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Paul Keew, Sound Designer

Paul Keew, Sound Designer
Composer, singer, and music teacher Paul Keew works extensively in the Greenville and Spartanburg (SC) areas. He has created sound design and original compositions for six of the last seven Summer Shakespeare productions. His original music for the 2004 production of As You Like It debuted to rave reviews and is available by contacting us. When not designing sound for Summer Shakespeare, Paul teaches at USC Upstate and sings, composes, and arranges music for his church, his music website watchsong.com, and the Pitch Hitters, an a capella men’s chorus. Most recently he composed original music and lyrics for a new musical production of A Christmas Carol that debuted in December 2010. Paul and his wife Heather, an artist, live in Greenville.
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Kim Stegall, Adaptor

Kim Stegall, Adaptor
Kim worked as an author of secondary English grammar, writing, and literature textbooks for over fifteen years. She currently writes and edits for Trak, a new high school magazine from the publishers of World. Her love of words and meaningful language makes cutting plays a natural fit for her work as chief adaptor for Summer Shakespeare’s scripts. She has worked with her husband Jeff on all twelve Summer Shakespeare productions as well as several plays in other venues. Her children’s book, Mumsi Meets a Lion, was published in 2008. Rodney Robbins and the Rainy-day Pond, was released last year. (There’s even a book trailer!)
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Clinton Holden, Intern

Clinton Holden, Intern
Clinton is a senior communications major from Pickens, SC. He serves as the Performance Hall student worker on the campus of Bob Jones University. Clinton’s design credits include sound design forThen Came the Rain by Lydia Stewart (2011) and a musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (2010). He served as a production assistant for The Winslow Boy (2009) and made a memorable cameo appearance (just ask him!) in a production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (2010). Clinton enjoys directing productions at his church and hopes to pursue graduate work in dramatic arts and/or communications..

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PAST PRODUCTIONS

Twelfth Night ’10
Two Gentlemen of Verona ’09
Tempest ’08
Midsummer Night’s Dream ’07
Love’s Labor’s Lost ’06
Comedy of Errors ’05
As You Like It ’04
Two Gentlemen of Verona ’98
The Importance of Being Earnest ’97
As You Like It ’96
Love’s Labor’s Lost ’95