Stratford Shakespeare Festival

Live Theatre, As You Like It, In Stratford

Toronto residents and visitors alike will be richly rewarded when they visit the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Only two hours from Toronto, this event provides audiences with ever-changing programs of fine entertainment in four distinctive theatres. Audiences will enjoy the classics, as well as new works, musicals, and dramas when they visit this outstanding display of theatrical expertise and grandiose props and costumes.

Audiences of all ages are sure to enjoy this live theatre experience. This year's playbill for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival has something for everyone:

  • As You Like It, April 30th - Oct 31st
  • Dangerous Liaisons, Aug 3rd - Oct 30th
  • Do Not Go Gentle, Jul 2nd - Sept 11th
  • Evita, May 28th - Oct 30th
  • For The Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, Jul 27th - Sept 26th
  • Jaques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, May 14th - Sept 25th
  • King of Thieves, Jul 18th - Sept 18th
  • Kiss Me, Kate, April 10th - Oct 30th
  • Peter Pan, April 16th - Oct 31st
  • The Tempest, June 11th - Sept 12th
  • The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Jul 30th - Sept 19th
  • The Winter's Tale, May 27th - Sept 25th


In addition to seeing fabulous plays, Toronto's Stratford Shakespeare Festival offers tours, night music, lectures, a writers' series, and post-performance discussions with the actors. While attending the festival, there are wonderful dining and touring opportunities that come with being so close to Toronto. Rather than rushing through everything there is to see, a family vacation that allows a more leisurely pace will allow everyone to see all there is to enjoy.

Night music offerings range from Schulman, jazz, an irreverent bassoon quartet, or even Big Band favorites performed by Stratford Shakespeare Festival musicians and other local talent in a series of music workshop concerts.

The Celebrated Writers Series provides visitors with an opportunity to experience talks and readings with many of today's most popular authors and playwrights, including Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, mystery writers, Giles Blunt and Louise Penny, and world renowned Germaine Greer, who changed the world of feminism with her first book, The Female Eunuch (1969). Greer's 2007 book, Shakespeare's Wife, is sure to stimulate plenty of discussion at this year's Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

For the true theater aficionado, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival also offers backstage and costume warehouse tours with plenty of inside information, trivia, and history.