SA@S
ON TOUR

our alums have the opportunity to reunite in the summer and create bold, stripped down original productions, bringing Shakespeare into the community

The SA@S Alumni Company supports both artistic development and community outreach.

It's a bridge from Stratford out into the wider world — and, for our alums, a bridge from formal training toward their professional artistic lives.

The program brings Shakespeare's work and ensemble-based theater to a wide and diverse audience, while empowering our alumni with the opportunity to create theater of their own, on their own — from the ground up, as a collaborative ensemble.

Each summer, a quartet of SA@S alums returns to Stratford to form the Alumni Company. Together, they select a play to produce and perform in. They cut and shape the text, choose their roles, and work as a team on all aspects of production — from design and staging to the logistics of setting up a tour. With artistic and financial support from SA@S, the Alumni Company begin their work in Stratford. Housed alongside the Summer Ensemble, they have access to master classes and Friday Night Showings while doing the daily work of building their own original production and preparing to hit the road.

In July and August, the alumni company travels around the northeast for several weeks performing their show. 

Alumni Company productions have been seen in Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut, and Rhode Island — in bookstores, coffee shops, libraries, summer camps, backyards, art galleries, Central Park, and Washington Square Park, and, always, in Stratford alongside the current SA@S Ensemble productions as part of the culmination of the summer’s theatrical efforts.

Along the way, the company gains confidence, resourcefulness, and experience in all aspects of creating, producing, and touring a production — from devising and staging to rehearsing as an ensemble; from adapting Shakespeare's text to publicizing, fundraising, and teaching educational workshops; from managing a tour to envisioning a simple, effective design world.

The Alumni Company is on hiatus in 2020, but to learn more about its future, contact Alumni Coordinator Olivia Gregorich.

For me, Alumni Company was the bridge I needed to connect my training with the creation of an artistic career. It was my first chance to put all of the skills I learned at school as well as at SA@S into practice. SA@S provides young theater-makers with an artistic home, and Alumni Company provides them the chance to take the risk of putting their own work into the world, while knowing they have a theater home base to which they can return to in Stratford.

Alumni Company gives you two of the most important ingredients for growth: time and space. It is an immense gift to allow yourself the time and space to be able to make your own work. As a member of the Alumni Company, I was able take that leap of faith into the unknown, testing my capacity as a theater-maker and my sense of self, all while knowing that I had a safety net of resources and my theater-making family to catch me if and when I fell.

My summer as a member of Alumni Company provided me the time and space to experiment — as an actor in rehearsal, as an administrator, as a script editor, and as a collaborator. Alumni Company is an opportunity to become more — to become a maker. It's nice to be home. It's even better to stride bravely out into the world, knowing you have a home to which you can return. 

—KELLY LETOURNEAU
(SA@S 2014, ALUMNI CO. 2015, SA@S ADMINISTRATOR 2016-2019)