DOGE Won’t Stop ‘Romeo And Juliet’ Performances In Prentis Park June 26-29 | Local News

The festival’s board of directors, the Vermillion community and other organizations in southeast South Dakota reacted by finding ways, as Shakespeare would say, “to take arms against a sea of troubles.”

The funding shortfall has been overcome thanks to organizations ranging from the Vermillion Chamber and Development Company (VCDC) to the City of Vermillion.

That has made it possible for the actors and crew to travel to Vermillion as originally planned and begin rehearsing for the upcoming performance of “Romeo and Juliet.”

Also, as originally planned, the actors will appear in places other than the stage through community outreach efforts, including a recent visit to the Minnehaha County Juvenile Detention Center.

It means negative rumors about the festival’s fate that have been circulating lately are not true.

The show will go on. “Romeo and Juliet” performances are scheduled in Vermillion’s Prentis Park, beginning at 7 p.m. the evenings of June 26 through June 29. People are encouraged to arrive early to see local theatre talent from Yankton and Vermillion perform beginning at 6:35 p.m.

The Board of Directors of the SDSF was blind-sided last April when it received unexpected bad news from the South Dakota Humanities Council.

Dennis Nelsen of Vermillion, the vice president of marketing for the SDSF who helps apply for grant funding that makes each year’s performances possible, received a letter April 16 from Christina Oey, the executive director of the South Dakota Humanities Council.

“We are writing to inform you that, due to an unexpected cut in federal funding, we are temporarily pausing all grant award notifications,” Oey states in her letter. “This development came as a surprise, particularly as a continuing resolution to fund the government was passed on March 15, 2025, which led us to believe that our funding stream would remain stable.”

“It’s essentially DOGE’s attack on Vermillion,” Greg Huckabee of Vermillion, president of the SDSF Board of Directors, told the Plain Talk shortly after Oey’s letter arrived.

In her letter to Nelsen, Oey writes that decisions at the federal level “have impacted the allocation of funds to our program and we must now reassess our grantmaking capacity in light of these changes.

“We understand how important this funding is to your organization and the communities you serve,” she states. “Please know that we are working urgently to evaluate our resources and determine next steps.”

The SDSF’s Board of Director’s hard work since receiving the bad news from Oey has been rewarded.

“A large part of it (overcoming the funding shortfall) is owed directly to this community, to the City of Vermillion, to the bridges that we have built reaching out to other local community partners,” said Rebecca Bailey, the executive artistic director of the SDSF.

Funding sources, such as the City of Vermillion, provided a one-time allocation of extra dollars to help the SDSF overcome the DOGE-caused budget shortfall.

The City provided in-kind support to the festival in 2012 and 2014 and provided financial support of $2,000 in 2015; $3,000 in 2016, $3,625 in 2017; and $4,000 for 2018 and 2019.

Since 2022, the City has provided $5,000 in annual support from the BBB (Bed, Board and Booze) fund to the Shakespeare Festival. The City’s 2025 award budget of $5,000 for the Shakespeare Festival was paid in March.

Last month, the Vermillion City Council agreed to award approximately $4,800 in additional funds to the SDSF to help it close the gap in its funding shortfall.

Bailey noted that the Vermillion Area Community Foundation also doubled the amount of funds it usually awards to the SDSF, adding that funding has come from additional sources that she chose not to try to list for fear of omitting a benefactor.

“We have been gifted a lot to try and get the chance to get through this season and to at least be able to pay for the season,” she said.

Reaching the funding goals to allow this year’s festival to take place provides a limited amount of relief, Bailey added.

“This year, we have our contracts paid with our actors and as I’ve promised … I wasn’t through fighting and the South Dakota Shakespeare Festival isn’t through fighting,” she said. “The City has shown us that they’re standing with us to get us through this year.”

The festival’s board of directors must now work to envision a future with fewer to no federal grants, Bailey said.

In the meantime, joy is found with the “one incredible class we’ve already had at the juvenile detention center,” she said Saturday afternoon. “Our actors have finished blocking the entire show and at about 3:30 or 4 o’clock this evening I will sit down and watch the very first run of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ sword fights and all.”

As the actors continue their efforts until showtime later this month, help continues to pour in from other community sources.

Cee Cee’s (605 Scratch Kitchen & Bar in downtown Vermillion) has helped with affordable food options to help with our actors who don’t make much, to allow them to stay here,” she said.

In turn, the SDSF actors and crew are becoming part of the Vermillion community.

“We have people in the community here who are excited to be a part of what’s happening in Vermillion,” Bailey said. “They’re going to the restaurants; they’ve gone to trivia events downtown. As far as any of them are concerned, we’re having our normal season and we are excited.”

The work needed to make that “normal season” a reality despite DOGE “has helped us recognize that we’ve started some conversations and it’s helped us to recognize how we can continue the conversations to get more of our entire community here and involved because it belongs to us. It belongs to southeast South Dakota.

“That’s the community we’re celebrating and why we do this. Out of something that was really negative, us coming together with the community and having more conversations, I think, is really positive,” she said, “We owe them a lot and we’re working hard to show them that.”

Some of the funding the SDSF received this year came from an entity that is federally funded. It’s expected that those dollars won’t be available next year.

Individuals of the community of Vermillion and southeast South Dakota, however, stepped up to make this year’s performances possible, Bailey said.

“The City has made it possible and all of these people (that have provided funds) have made it possible this year and at the same time to be or not to be remains a question of how we’re going to be. I don’t think it is whether we are going to be, but how we are going to exist,” she said, “and what’s going to change without any federal grants to protect the arts and the accessibility of the arts for everybody.”

The SDSF Board of Directors will begin planning for its 2026 performances in August and casting a new show with a new director before Thanksgiving.

“The South Dakota Shakespeare Festival is a year-round piece for us to provide a couple of weeks in the summer,” Bailey said.

“Romeo and Juliet” will be performed in late June with a cast of 11 actors. The show’s crew, working throughout southeast South Dakota, numbers 25.

“There are some (actors) that are local, there’s some that are regional and then they’re some that are national and even international. There’s a huge group of folks that really come together,” she said. “Some of the folks aren’t working here … there are folks that are in New York, but who are doing our digital media.”

Some of the people involved in the festival’s efforts are University of South Dakota alum, Bailey added, who continue to give back to the Vermillion community.

Community outreach by the cast includes workshops at the Edith B. Siegrist Vermillion Public Library on Friday, June 27, a trivia event on Tuesday, June 24 at Dakota Brick House in downtown Vermillion and a “Bark with the Bard” event in Prentis Park on Saturday morning, June 28.

“I think that the story here is the show must go on. That is the theatre montage and we at SDSF are moving on and we are grateful to the City, to the community, to the foundations that have all stood behind us and to the individuals,” she said. “We really hope, whether they gave this year or they’re interested, that they come out and they see ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and they see how important this is to our community.”

“I hope I get a chance to visit with them about our work at the juvenile detention center, our work with students with Upward Bound — all of these programs that are important and really vital parts of remembering that theater is about connecting all of us,” Bailey said. “In a world where we are watching the divides play out on the TV in front of us, coming together and sitting down with everybody in your community in person and laughing together and crying together and going through and watching the sword fights and all of the moments — that’s what it means to be community.”

She talked about the special atmosphere in Prentis Park, when Shakespeare is performed outdoors and, unlike a darkened theatre, the actors and audience members can all see each other.

“You are a part of the story because we are all watching each other, right? I see them laugh in the audience and the actors see us. They talk to us. You are part of the story, and we are part of it together,” Bailey said. “And that is so different about community building … you are making eye contact with the people beside you and with the actors. You are in the story with them.

“It builds community. It reminds us that we are in this mix together, differently, and it is magical and it was true in Shakespeare’s day,” she said.

Bailey talked of how “human” the stories of Shakespeare are and how the cast of “Romeo and Juliet” showed young people they visited with at the juvenile detention center how he wrote of conflict that is identified with to this day.

“These aren’t antiquated stories. These are stories right here, right now, about a human experience,” she said, “and this coming together, when we can talk about it and experience it as a community, that’s what makes this unique.”

Bailey said Cee Cee’s may provide some food during the performances later this month that will also feature theatre talent from Yankton and Vermillion before the main show.

“There really is an atmosphere of a festival that we are trying to make sure exists,” she said. “Come, your kids don’t have to sit in a seat and be 100% quiet. This is an open place to be a family and come together as a community. I hope we get to share that.

“I hope all get out to enjoy this and enjoy being a community,” Bailey said. “I hope they enjoy experiencing stories that have talked about the human experience at its essence for over 400 years.”