Bountiful Bard

Jan Breslauer’s article on Shakespeare makes it sound as though it’s impossible to find good Shakespeare productions in L.A., but on closer examination, what’s hard to find is huge, big-budget productions with big stars (“Bard, Where Art Thou?,” Feb. 4).

A look through Calendar’s listing of “smaller theaters” yields multiple Shakespeare productions, many of them by companies outside the L.A. city limits and most unmentioned by Breslauer. In addition to A Noise Within, there is the Pasadena Shakespeare Company; the Knightsbridge Theater, also in Pasadena, which produces plays by Shakespeare’s contemporaries, such as Webster and Middleton; the Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company, which does free productions of Shakespeare at the John Anson Ford Theatre; Shakespeare Festival/LA; and the East LA Classic Theater.

There are already plenty of well-established local companies that do Shakespeare. Corporations should consider the tremendous potential for goodwill they gain in supporting local Shakespeare, and city councils should note that a Shakespeare company radically improves the quality of life in a community and attracts residents and tourists alike.

MELISSA D. AARON

Pomona