Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival

The largest professional Shakespeare festival in Western Canada, Bard on the Beach was founded by artistic director Christopher Gaze in 1990. Every summer, the festival hosts four Shakespearean plays inside red-and-white tents set up along English Bay in Vanier Park. Added in 2011, the 742-seat Mainstage tent is an open-ended venue facing the bay, creating a backdrop of water and the North Shore Mountains. The smaller Douglas Campbell Studio Stage provides a more intimate space for nontraditional staging and less familiar plays. Both stages are situated within Bard Village, which includes a Shakespeare-themed gift shop and full concessions.