The award was created to recognize an outstanding director or choreographer who is transforming the regional arts landscape through his singular creativity and artistry in theater.

In 2019, he directed The Good Person of Schezwan, written by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Wendy Arons, adapted by Tony Kushner.

Participants study acting, physical comedy, stage combat, movement, improvisation, and text, and the camps still culminate in a Shakespeare performance by each age group.

Also in 1979, the festival began holding fall classes, a training program in all facets of classical theater including voice and movement, period style, scansion, stage combat, and other production aspects.

In 2007, Cal Shakes received the first of several grants from the NEA's Shakespeare in American Communities initiative to expand its residency program and Student Discovery Matinee activities.

The two-year process (2004–2006) included interviews with former drug lords and Shakespearean scholars; writing workshops in schools, juvenile halls, and churches; and Q&A panels attended by the public.

From 2005-2007, the NW/NC program developed King of Shadows, an adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa that took place in San Francisco, with gay urban youth at its center.

In 2007, Cal Shakes commissioned San Francisco playwright Octavio Solis to adapt The Pastures of Heaven, an early novel of interconnected stories about farm life in the Salinas Valley by John Steinbeck.

The adapted work is the first play specifically commissioned for California Shakespeare's Main Stage, and had its world premiere in June 2010, directed by Jonathan Moscone.

Piloted in 2017 with Marcus Gardley's black odyssey and officially launched with 2018's Quixote Nuevo by Octavio Solis, the New Classics Initiative continues in 2019 with the world premiere of House of Joy by Madhuri Shekar.

Future NCI productions will reimagine classic Western drama through a diversity of form and content, cultural and gender perspectives, and adaptation and reinvention.

The space was funded by a capital campaign led by Clarence Woodard and named in memory of the late son of George and Sue Bruns.