The story of the Siesta Valley Foundation begins with the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, founded in 1974 as an offshoot of the Emeryville Shakespeare Company. In its early years, the Festival performed in Berkeley parks and community spaces, driven by a commitment to make Shakespeare accessible to Bay Area audiences.
Those roots in Berkeley gave Cal Shakes a strong cultural identity, but they also meant the company sometimes felt a step removed from the neighboring communities of Lafayette, Moraga, and Orinda, where its amphitheater would eventually take root. Indeed, today few local residents outside the theater world are familiar with Cal Shakes, and even fewer can find Siesta Valley on a map. The Siesta Valley Foundation aims to change that by returning to Cal Shakes’ original mission of making the performing arts more accessible to more audiences.
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In 1991, the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival built the Bruns Memorial Amphitheater in the oak-studded hills of Siesta Valley. This gave the company a permanent home in one of the East Bay’s most beautiful natural settings. For three decades, audiences experienced Shakespeare and other classics under the stars, a tradition that became central to a certain section of the Bay Area’s cultural life.
The Siesta Valley Foundation now honors that history while expanding its mission. By preserving the watershed, modernizing the amphitheater, and broadening programming to include music, film, dance, and education, we are writing the next chapter in the valley’s story — one that is more connected, inclusive, and reflective of the communities that surround it.
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100 California Shakespeare Theater Way Orinda, CA 94563
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