Our History

1986


The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, originally operating as Shakespeare Festival/LA, presented its first Summer Festival production of Twelfth Night in Pershing Square. The audience included friends, a few earnest theatergoers, and homeless residents of the Square.

The homeless residents took great pride in the production, and each afternoon, they became more and more involved in its promotion and management, showing the audience where to sit, handing out programs, answering questions, and thanking everyone for coming.

One night, our gracious hosts presented our founder, Ben Donenberg, with four large trash bags filled with aluminum cans. Wanting to contribute, they explained that the actors could take the cans to a recycling center and get a nickel a piece.

Deeply touched, Artistic Director Ben Donenberg declined their offer but instead created the Food for Thought admission policy in response, requesting that audience members donate non-perishable food to gain admission instead of buying a ticket.

1990


SCLA presents its first Simply Shakespeare, an annual fundraiser hosted by Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson that continued for 25 years.

1993


SCLA expanded to offer the workforce development program Will Power After-School an employment and enrichment program that serves poverty threshold youth ages 14-24, who are hired as full-time, paid employees to study, create, produce, and perform adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays.

2000


SCLA purchased and moved into its permanent downtown headquarters, strategically located within a two-block radius of three Title 1 high schools serving approximately 20% of the City of Los Angeles’s youth living at or below the poverty threshold.

2010


SCLA hosted Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Trial of Hamlet.

2011


SCLA received The Rosetta LeNoire Award by Actors' Equity Association in recognition of artistic contributions to the universality of the human experience in the American Theatre. 

2012


SCLA launched Veterans in Art (ViA), a program offering short-term paid vocational training in technical theater arts and life-skills development for high-need, chronically underemployed, honorably discharged U.S. military veterans. ViA was conceived by SCLA Founder Ben Donenberg after participating in the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s Joint Civilian Orientation Conference and training exercises with all five branches of the U.S. armed services.  

2018


SCLA celebrated the 25th anniversary of its nationally recognized and replicated Will Power After-School workforce development program for poverty threshold youth.

2024


The Shakespeare Center is at a pivotal moment of transition this year as construction is well underway on our new 299-seat multimedia theater, workforce training center, and arts education facility dedicated to youth, military veterans, and underserved communities. While our facility is closed for the next 12 months, we will continue to develop new theatrical productions; deliver our community programs at partner sites like LAUSD Title 1 schools and The West LA Veterans Collective; and provide teacher training on LAUSD campuses.