About us

Our Story

In November 2015 a group of Santa Fe Shakespeareans, including Robin Williams, Kristin Bundesen, and Caryl Farkas decided they wanted to continue building on the work they’d begun together in bringing the Folger Library First Folio to the New Mexico Museum of Art for First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare. That exhibit, which attracted the largest audience ever seen by the museum, was supported by talks, workshops, and performances by Shakespeare practitioners from around the world organized by the newly launched International Shakespeare Center.

ISC Founders Kristen Bundesen, Caryl Farkas, and Robin Williams

International, because our first act was to support the traveling exhibit from Washington D.C. with performances by actors trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and workshops provided by LAMDA faculty. And Shakespeare Center, because we wanted to develop as a dedicated place where performance, education, and community activities connected with Shakespeare could flourish. To start, we focused on connecting the local community with scholars and Shakespeare practitioners of note from around the United States, Canada and the UK.

A natural home for the ISC, Santa Fe is a longtime mecca for the arts – nurturing the acclaimed Santa Fe Opera, International Folk Arts Festival, Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, more than 200 art galleries, a dozen-plus museums, and a profusion of world-class restaurants.

2023 marked ISC Santa Fe’s fifth year of producing productions. Our company took time to pause, reflect, and distill what we have learned, in order to define and clarify our mission and values as we grow as a company. 

The conclusion we came to is that all of our work stems from our commitment to building ensembles both within our company and in our community. We strive to develop productions that take Shakespeare’s plays off the pedestal and explore their resonance in our contemporary times. We examine power, play with gender, and experiment with process. We create productions that provoke complex thoughts and deep feelings. We aim to present Shakespeare’s work as we experience it: exciting, alive, edgy, full of beauty, imagination, change, contradiction, and complexity. We want our whole community, from actors to audiences, from designers to students, to feel energized by Shakespeare.

To fully commit to these ambitions and values, we are proud to announce that we have changed our name from International Shakespeare Center to Incite Shakespeare Company Santa Fe. Our mission is to engage and build community through imaginative, entertaining, and insightful performances, using Shakespeare as a mirror to reflect our time.

Join us as we embody Shakespeare’s text and present our vision of an ensemble-driven creative process. We’re excited about this next phase of our company, come and incite Shakespeare with us!

2023: Power & Process

Rehearsal photo from Richard III

2022: Enchantment & Redemption

Production photo from Pericles

  • ISC Ensemble performs The Winter’s Tale and Pericles in repertory

  • Third year of Santa Fe Summer Shakespeare festival

  • Long Dead but Well Read program continues with: Edward II, The Duchess of Amalfi’s Steward in collaboration with Teatro Paraguas, and The Rover

  • Staged reading of William Shakespeare’s Tragical History of Frankenstein by Ian Doescher in collaboration with &Sons Theatre and Jean Cocteau Cinema

  • Duane W. Roller “The Greek Heritage of Shakespeare’s Plays” public talk

  • Katrin Talbot “SWOON: The Art of Shakespeare Blackout Poetry” interactive workshop

  • Zoe Burke “An Intimate Connection: A gathering about consensual staging of intimacy in the theatre” lecture-demonstration

  • Julian Alexander “Shakespeare was a Rapper: Hamlet, Damn It” performance-lecture

2021: The Romans

Final rehearsal of Julius Caesar

  • David and Ben Crystal “An Afternoon with the Crystals” a conversation with the father-son duo of Shakespeare luminaries

  • Duane W. Roller “Shakespeare and Antony and Cleopatra” and “The Roman World and Shakespeare” public talks

  • Julian Alexander “Shakespeare was a Rapper” performance-lecture with Asiah Thomas-Mandlman

  • Pivotal Relationships in Shakespeare: Lady Macbeth and Macbeth panel discussion with Mairi Chanel, Antonio Miniño, David Stallings, Kelly Kiernan, and Patrick Briggs

Radio Shakespeare Lab

2020: COVID

Rehearsals of Henry IV, Part I

2019: Questions of Honor

Opening Scene of King Lear

2017: A Year of Lear begins

  • Edward Daranyi acting workshops

  • Krishnan Venkatesh “Good and Evil in King Lear” public talk

  • Robert Benedetti “A Life with Lear” all-day seminar

  • Suzanne Cross “Midwinter Celebrations in King Lear’s Court” lecture-demonstration

  • 2nd year of the Youth Shakespeare Festival – Edward Daranyi guest artist

  • ISC Santa Fe joins Theatre Santa Fe

Upstart Crows teach a workshop for the Youth Shakespeare Festival

2016: First Folio Festival and the beginnings of a company

ISC-Ducdame Ensemble’s collaborative production of Twelfth Night, staged in Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return

  • First Folio Festival

  • LAMDA faculty Judith Phillips, Joanna Read, Rodney Cottier lead text, voice, and acting workshops with local actors

  • Collaboration with Ducdame Ensemble on an original production, Dames of Thrones: The Women of Shakespeare’s Histories

  • Downtown Shakespeare Treasure Hunt with Santa Fe Plaza businesses

  • Collaborative Repertory Season with Ducdame Ensemble, performing Twelfth Night at Meow Wolf and Merchant of Venice

  • 1st year of Youth Shakespeare Festival – Devon Glover guest artist