Richard H.C. Clay

Trustee

I choose to be an ASC board member because:

I love Shakespeare, repertory theatre, Blackfriars’ tradition of excellence, and all things Staunton!

My favorite ASC moment was:

The final 2024 performance of The Importance of Being Earnest—by far the most engaging and hilarious I’ve ever experienced.

I encourage you to support the ASC because:

Live repertory theatre matters, especially in a day and age where all of us need to be ennobled and find common ground. What better way to do so than at Blackfriars Theatre, located in Staunton, Virginia–one of America’s most beautiful and historic towns.

Biography:

Richard H. C. Clay served as President and CEO of The Filson Historical Society, Kentucky’s largest
privately funded historical society, for six years, retiring on December 31, 2024. Dick retired of counsel at
Dinsmore and Shohl, LLP, where he represented corporate, banking, fiduciary, philanthropic and multi-
generational family clients throughout his 42-year tenure.

In addition to his career as a lawyer, he has served on the board and chaired or co-chaired capital campaigns for several non-profits. He served as president of the Kentucky Bar Association, as a trustee of the Louisville-based Norton Foundation for 25 years, on the board and as interim CEO of the Presbyterian Church (USA) Foundation, as board chair and trustee of the Speed Art Museum, chair of the advisory board of Winston-Salem’s Museum of Early Southern Decorative Art (MESDA), and on the board of Kentucky Country Day School.

In addition to the American Shakespeare Center/Blackfriars Theatre, he serves on the boards of Shaker Village of South Union, Kentucky; MESDA; Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery Heritage Foundation; and the NYC-based Jarvie Program of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Foundation. He is a ruling elder of Louisville’s Second Presbyterian Church and a member of its choir. He worships at Trinity Episcopal Church when he is in Staunton.

He is a graduate of Davidson College (BA Economics, 1973), the University of Kentucky College of Law (JD 1977), and Middlebury College (MA English, 2022)—where his final class, Page to Stage, was at Lincoln College, Oxford University.

Dick and his wife, Elizabeth, have four adult children and three grandchildren. They have restored a circa 1815 farmhouse eight miles from Staunton, have gotten it placed on the Virginia and National Registers of Historic Places, and plan to spend more time there in retirement.