Garden Grove’s Shakespeare Festival: The Tempest Rages

Recently the mayor and a majority of the Garden Grove City Council voted to deprive us of one of our outstanding cultural and civic jewels when they declined to renew the meager subsidy which the increasingly acclaimed Garden Grove Shakespeare Festival needs to survive.

I have lived and worked and raised my children in the city of Garden Grove over a period of 30 years. Contrary to what our civic leaders seem to think, this is not a blue-collar, hard-hat community incapable of enjoying anything more sophisticated than the “(Texas) Chain Saw Massacre.” Shakespeare has been recognized for almost 500 years as the foremost literary genius in the English language and perhaps in the world’s literature. He needs no defense.

Regrettably, no cultural enterprises from grand opera to major symphony orchestras are economically self-sufficient. They need our municipal and private philanthropy. It is entirely probable that allowed a few more years of maturity, the Garden Grove Shakespeare Festival will attract as many people to our community as now make an annual trip to San Diego or Ashland, Ore. How much more convenient for us! And what a feather in our cap of civic pride.

Certainly the citizens and the city fathers of Garden Grove would like to be recognized for something besides the Strawberry Festival.

ARTHUR D. SILK, MD

Garden Grove