Major British theatrical company.
It was originally attached to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, which opened in 1879 as the site of an annual festival of William Shakespeare 's plays. The resident company was called the Shakespeare Memorial Company until 1961, when it was renamed and reorganized into two units, one to play at Stratford and the other to be based in London. The Stratford unit performs plays by Shakespeare and other Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, while the London unit, based at the Barbican arts complex, also performs modern plays and classics of other eras.