Parting is such sweet sorrow: Boise’s Shakespeare festival bids adieu to lawn seating

Hillside seating on the Idaho Shakespeare Festival’s grassy slope is, alas, not to be.

Ada County commissioners on Wednesday approved the theater’s request to renovate the hillside at its outdoor amphitheater to add new tiered seating, concrete paths between seating areas, and new shading structures to replace the grass and existing dying trees, according to county documentation of the request.

“The grass slope is becoming more challenging to utilize each year,” Caitlin Kessler, an architect for the project, wrote to Ada County Development staff.

Because the amphitheater is situated between the Boise River and the Boise River floodway, the festival needed commissioners’ approval for a variance to undertake the project.

The permanent seating and shade structures will benefit patrons and actors, county staff told commissioners. The Shakespeare Festival will upgrade patron seating, provide additional Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant spaces and shade the stage “so that the actors are not blinded by the setting sun.”

They would also address the festival’s concerns about maintaining the grass in the steep hillside seating area.

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