St Lawrence Shakespeare Festival

The St Lawrence Shakespeare Festival (SLSF) runs annually in Prescott, Ontario in July and August.

SLSF was founded in 2002, when Artistic Director Deborah Smith brought a small touring production of Romeo and Juliet through Prescott for a single performance.

Farthing increased the number of mainstage productions from one to two, added a Sunday series of special events and an educational program.

[6] Highlights of those years included a 2011 production of Twelfth Night, which won the Prix Rideau Award for Outstanding Production in the greater Ottawa-Gatineau region,[11] and adaptations by Canadian playwrights of some less frequently produced works by Shakespeare such as The Merry Wives of Windsor (adapted by playwright John Lazarus for Prescott's 200th anniversary year as Trouble on Dibble Street),[12][13] and Love's Labour's Lost (adapted by playwright Lucia Frangione to a War of 1812 setting as A Maid for a Musket).

Innovations introduced by Waddington included recruiting a team of local volunteers to play crowds and soldiers in productions of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra,[17][18] facilitating work on a scale that had not yet been seen at the Festival, and a series of “Community Productions”, in which post-season productions were directed by Waddington, as fundraisers for the Festival, that exclusively featured local amateur actors[19] After the 2017 season, Waddington departed and Richard Sheridan Willis, who had appeared in the festival as an actor for three seasons was named as the new Artistic Director.