The Texas Shakespeare Festival was developed to establish a professional summer theatre for East Texas based in Kilgore that would be housed in the Van Cliburn Auditorium. The festival has broad appeal to professional theatre artists, and can employ high caliber actors, designers and directors from throughout the nation. In addition to producing The Bard's plays and other noteworthy stage plays, the festival creates regional plays about the East Texas oilfield discovery as a cultural historical memento of our unique and colorful heritage. In June 1986, the Texas Shakespeare Festival opened its inaugural season as Kilgore College’s contribution to the Texas Sesquicentennial celebration with performances of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Daisy Bradford 3 by Gifford Wingate.

Festival activities include pre-show talks, after-show curtain calls, Shakespeare garden walks, Silent Auction, Back stage tour, Stratford shop, and Stage changeover viewing.