The scrappy local theater troupe known as the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival is celebrating their 35th season in SF this year, and they're doing with an extended series of brief outdoor performances in locations all around town, between February and August. It's called "35 Famous Speeches in 35 Famous Places," and it kicks off with the famed "O that this too solid flesh would melt" speech from Hamlet, performed by Davern Wright on February 11 on the boardwalk at Crissy Field, with the Golden Gate Bridge as his backdrop.

Each month will feature a group of performances, each anchored by one of Hamlet's famed soliloquies, in honor of what will be the company's 35th anniversary free stage production later this summer, Hamlet, performed in several Bay Area parks between August and October, including at the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in McLaren Park, and the Main Post Lawn in the Presidio.

As they explain, the series was inspired by the Festival’s popular "Free Shakespeare in the Parklet" performances five years ago, "in which Festival actors presented flash mob-style scenes for crowds in parklets across the city."

Later this month, on Sunday, February 12 at 1 p.m., Sarah Shoshana David will perform the "These are the forgeries of jealousy" speech outside the Conservatory of Flowers, and on Tuesday, February 14 at 12:30 p.m. Carl Holvick and Lauren Spencer will perform the "But soft what light through yonder window breaks" scene from Romeo & Juliet at Yerba Buena Gardens.

There's then a kickoff event for the speech series on February 16 at 6 p.m. at the Presidio Officers' Club, in which Artistic Director Rebecca J. Ennals and Resident Artists of the company will do repeat performances of the first four speeches, and reveal the rest of the schedule for the coming six months.

Also, on April 22, SF Shakes will be hosting its fifth annual fundraising gala at the Marines Memorial Club near Union Square, but details on that have not yet been finalized.

SF Shakes is a unique organization and a smaller operation than CalShakes in Orinda, or the much larger Oregon Shakespeare Festival or Shakespeare in the Park in New York. Founded in 1983, their mission is to "make the works of Shakespeare accessible to everyone, regardless of age, ethnicity, geography, economic status, or level of education," and they do this through truncated traveling programs that are performed at schools and community centers throughout the Bay Area, reaching some 70,000 students each year. They also have Bay Area Shakespeare Camps, and they bring Free Shakespeare in the Park to an audience of some 30,000 people each summer, performing one production in multiple locales over the course of three months. In 2016, they performed A Winter's Tale in Amador Valley Community Park in Pleasanton, at the Memorial Park Amphitheater in Cupertino, on the grounds of Sequoia High School in Redwood City, as well as in the Presidio and in McLaren Park in San Francisco.