Rebecca Kemper Goodheart

Rebecca Kemper Goodheart has been a director, actor, and teacher specializing in Shakespeare and Voice for over 20 years.  Having worked with over a dozen Shakespeare theaters throughout the United States, she is proud to be a lifetime member of Shakespeare Theater Association where she is chairperson for Shakespeare 2016, the year-long global celebration of Shakespeare’s 400 year legacy.  After her tenure as Director of Training for San Francisco Shakespeare Festival from 2010-13, her artistic endeavors have included directing Merry Wives of Windsor for African American Shakespeare Company (as seen in American Theater Magazine May 2013), vocal/text coaching for Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival, joining Prague Shakespeare Festival for the 2013/14 season as a director, teacher and researcher.   Prior to San Francisco, she served as Producing Artistic Director for Maryland Shakespeare Festival (an equity theater she founded in 1999), Artistic Director of the Metawhateverphor Theater in NYC, and Director of Education for Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, as well as being a company member and text teacher for Shakespeare & Co. in Massachusetts.  She holds a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of Arts, a Master of Letters in Shakespeare & Renaissance Literature, and an MFA in Directing (both from the American Shakespeare Center/Mary Baldwin College). She received her designation as a Linklater Voice Teacher in 2014.   She has presented her research into Shakespeare’s dramatic use of rhetoric at numerous national conferences, and theatrical workshops across the country, as well as having her scholarship published in the Wooden O Journal and Shakespeare Criticism, online.