NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The Nashville Shakespeare Festival returns Thursday night at Centennial Park. It's their first time back at Centennial Park since 2018. With this homecoming, it's a chance for a team to look back and also forward.
"I had a huge emotional reaction," Donald Capparella said, watching a rehearsal in Centennial Park. "It's like I was coming home."
This story starts in 1988. It was a time of new beginnings for the arts in Nashville.
"I'd been a lawyer for four years," Capparella remembered. "I'd worked my way through college as an actor and musician."
1980 had seen the opening of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, and the years after had seen a whole bunch of companies and art forms emerge in Nashville. Capparella's question was; would Nashville go see live performances of Shakespeare?
In was 1988 in Centennial Park when a crew put that question to the test.
"We didn't actually get permission from parks to do it," Capparella smiled. "We just did it. When we did As You Like It that first year, we just cast our friends. Nobody was getting paid. Our budget was $500."
That meant no lighting. A big hurdle came when it got so dark out, the actors couldn't be seen.
"Everybody drove their cars up, and we finished the play to the headlights," Capparella said. "People loved it."
Capparella didn't know this yet in 1988, but he'd just founded the Nashville Shakespeare Festival.
"I got some advice," he continued. "'If you really want to do something in arts in Nashville, you have to see Martha Ingram.'"
Capparella had lunch with Ingram, businesswoman and strong supporter of the arts.
"She became a regular donor," Capparella said, adding someone with her Ingram Industries has remained on the Festival board since then.
The new production is a milestone.
"The reason we picked Midsummer Night's Dream this year is its the last production we did before we left Centennial Park," said executive director Isabel Tipton-Krispin. "It's kinda a homage to our return back."
She turned her attention to the future of the festival.
"Next season, we'll be debuting the playhouse," Tipton-Krispin said. "We'll have a brand new, big reusable set. It'll look like a modern version of an Elizabethan playhouse. Think about the Globe, but retrofitted to fit inside the band shell."
The famous band shell in Centennial Park itself isn't changing. This set will come and go with the Nashville Shakespeare Festival productions.
The latest production is 21 performances now through September 20th.
With the recent death of Martha Ingram, this is yet another of her interests that's going after so long.
I asked Capparella if he ever looks back at pictures from that original 1988 production. He does.
"It helps to be naive, not know that you can't do something or shouldn't do something," he said. "The secret to starting a Shakespeare Festival is not realize you're starting a Shakespeare Festival. We were just a bunch of actors who said, 'let's do a play in the park,' and so we did."
Do you have a positive, good news story? You can email me at forrest.sanders@newschannel5.com.
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