Bard-a-thon is our 8 day celebration of all of Shakespeare’s works. The community reads plays and sonnets 24 hours a day until we’ve read them all! It’s about 8 days of solid Shakespeare.
Volunteers facilitate each show around the clock. They assign roles and keep the plays moving. People from all over the Fairbanks area come to The Empress and read at all hours of the day and night. We have a speaker phone and get callers joining us from all over the world. Microphones are spread around the room and all the reads are broadcast on streaming audio over the internet. School groups come in during the weekdays for special educational sessions.
The first Bard-a-thon was in 1999 at the Fairbanks Masonic Temple. Since then, FST Artistic Director, Bruce Rogers, has start another annual Bard-a-thon in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. It’s not hard to start up a Bard-a-thon; all you need are some Riversides and some bodies!
Some short videos about Bard-a-thon and how it affects our community are available here and here.
