The Shakespeare Company RPO Bankers Hall

"A lean and mean classical theatre company." That's how artistic director Haysam Kadri describes The Shakespeare Company, which was established in Calgary in 1996. "We want to educate and inspire through the works of William Shakespeare," says Haysam, who took over as the company's artistic lead in 2012.

However, that doesn't mean The Shakespeare Company only produces works by The Bard, as Shakespeare is oft referred to as. "We only have 36 to 39 plays to choose from, depending upon who you speak with," says Haysam. The numeric discrepancy is the result of academic discussion over authorship and/or partial authorship of certain titles attributed to Shakespeare. "We don't want to recycle Romeo and Juliet and The Scottish Play every two to three years," he adds. (In the world of theatre, a superstition exists that it's bad luck to utter the name of the play Macbeth. Actors use various euphemisms to refer to the work including "The Scottish Play.")

Therefore, to vary the company's offerings, classic works such as The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas and Shakespeare-inspired contemporary stories such as Anne-Marie MacDonald's Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) also appear on the company's repertoire. The Shakespeare Company produces four mainstage productions a year.