By Liz Eichler, LCT President
Cincinnati Shakespeare Company began with a $250 grant to put on a show.
Brian Isaac Phillips, Producing Artistic Director shared that fact this week. Now, more than three decades later, CSC is asking Cincinnati to help raise $25 million for a 19,000-square-foot expansion in Over-the-Rhine.
That is a quite a leap–and an admirable one.
We’ve watched Cincinnati Shakespeare Company (CSC) grow from those early productions at Gabriel’s Corner to a converted one-screen movie theater and, ultimately, its own purpose-built home on Elm Street. Now the company wants to grow again.
At this week’s capital campaign launch, Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval made it clear that the city sees that growth as part of a much bigger story of the continuing transformation of Over-the-Rhine.
“We are already a world-class arts community,” Pureval said. “We’ve got to work intentionally across industries, across disciplines to continue to put Cincinnati on the map.”
For Pureval, that means investing in the arts as both a cultural asset and an economic one. “The vision that Shakespeare Company has aligns with the vision that City Hall has,” he said.
That alignment is what makes the company’s new “For All, For All Time” campaign about much more than a building.
From a Movie Theater to a Home
Many Cincinnati audiences first came to know CSC–or Cincy Shakes–through a converted movie theater that had practically no lobby space, at least compared to the welcoming new facility. Yet it still became a respected home for the classics, as well as a home base for actors and craftspeople.
One of my first shows after moving to the region was a Studio Series production of No Exit and The Endgame in 2007. These existentialist one-acts are required reading in countless theater-history classes but rarely find their way onto mainstage seasons.
I remember seeing Giles Davies in No Exit, and again in The Elephant Man and countless other roles. Brent Vimtrup, Jim Hopkins, Barry Mulholland, Sara Clark, and Kelly Mengelkoch also became part of the fabric of the company, returning season after season to play royalty, heroes, clowns or villains.
At this week’s announcement, I looked around and saw Davies, as well as generations of Cincinnati Shakespeare Company in the same room: longtime theatre company members such as Hopkins and Clark alongside newer artists such as Eva Olivia Catanzariti, who plays Beatrice in the current Shakespeare in the Park production.
As we all gathered in the Otto M. Budig Theater, Phillips reflected on the company’s history. “When we announced our new theater in 2015, we knew it was only the beginning,” he said.
Now the company is ready to act on that promise.
19,000 Square Feet of Possibility
The expansion would turn the parking lot immediately south of the Budig Theater into a 19,000-square-foot community arts and education center.
At its heart will be a flexible Studio Theater seating about 150 people, along with three multipurpose education and community spaces. Expanded production and operational facilities will allow the two buildings to function as one theatrical campus.
For an arts organization, that additional space can have a significant impact.
A rehearsal doesn’t have to compete with a performance for a room. Artists can experiment with a new work. A community organization can gather. A Studio Series can return without having to fit itself into the architecture of a larger theater.
And the possibilities extend beyond CSC, lifting up community groups like the Q-Kidz.
Fostering the Next Generation
Marquicia Jones-Woods, founder of Q-Kidz dance school, told me that for years they walked past Cincinnati Shakespeare Company “wondering what happened inside,” unsure whether the theater was a place for them.
Now the Q-Kidz have walked through those doors and become part of CSC productions, with Jones-Woods providing life-changing opportunities for these young dancers who live in the neighborhoods surrounding CSC. This expansion can mean rehearsal space, and even more opportunities for Jones-Woods and her team to empower these ladies, building confidence, empathy and understanding that they can do big things.
A theater becomes more valuable to a city when people who once saw it from the outside begin to see themselves inside it. That idea of expanding access is central to the campaign.
Campaign chairs Debby and Jim Mason are approaching the project from a perspective that is both personal and generational. Debby Mason has spoken about the influence of her father, who instilled in her a passion for theater and a belief that “Shakespeare teaches us what it means to be human.”
“More than four centuries after Shakespeare wrote his plays, his words continue to appear in the books we read, the ideas we debate and the stories we tell,” she continued.
The campaign carries that legacy forward while creating room for what comes next. It is not simply about expanding a building, Mason said, but about expanding possibilities.
A City Built Around the Arts
Cincinnati already has something many cities would love to have: an extraordinary concentration of iconic performing-arts organizations within a walkable urban neighborhood.
Music Hall. Memorial Hall. SCPA. Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati. Know Theatre. The Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati. Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. The Emery Theatre. Washington Park at the center of it all.
The designation of “Theatre Row” helped put a name to what artists and audiences had already been experiencing for years: these organizations may have separate missions and stages, but they are part of the same cultural ecosystem.
Actors, directors, designers, technicians, musicians, administrators, educators and audiences move among these institutions. Success for one organization can create opportunities for another.
CSC’s own numbers make the economic argument tangible. The company says it welcomes about 28,000 audience members each year, with approximately 15% traveling from outside Greater Cincinnati. It estimates those visitors generate roughly $1 million in spending at nearby restaurants, businesses, hotels and attractions.
But the value of a theater isn’t measured only in dollars. It is measured in a student discovering Shakespeare, an actor finding a professional home, a new play getting its first rehearsal or a community organization finding a place to gather. More, it is about looking after the people in your immediate neighborhood, ensuring they have access to your offerings.
Cincinnati is a city developing a reputation for taking its arts and cultural communities seriously.
Building the Next Field
Phillips has a particular vision for what all that new space can accomplish.
“Imagine a space that allows artists to take risks,” he said. “Imagine a space where the community feels at home.”
Then he went one step further. “Cincinnati Shakespeare Company is going to build another field.” That field could become an incubator for the next generation of artistic and community innovators.
CSC remembers what it was like to start small, working in church basements and renovated single-screen movie theaters. Now, Phillips said, the company can help other artists and emerging organizations take their own first steps. The building is expected to be ready by the 2028-20 theatre season.
Theatre’s Dream Keeps Getting Bigger
The most striking thing about CSC’s history may be how often the company has had to imagine a future that didn’t yet exist.
From a $250 grant for a single production and now, from one theater to an integrated campus.
Each step required someone to believe the next step was possible—including the founders, the funders, the artists and the audiences who kept showing up.
Pureval called the campaign a “massive cultural investment in Over-the-Rhine” and emphasized that the city is eager to be a partner.
“This is only the start,” he said. “But it’s a damn exciting start.”
For more information about the expansion and how to donate go to: https://cincyshakes.com/on-stage/expansion.
For more information about Cincinnati Shakespeare’s 2026-27 season, opening with Network, based on the Paddy Chayefsky film, on September 11, 2026 go to: https://cincyshakes.com/on-stage
