Six years into an ever-growing Island Shakespeare Festival, founder Rose Woods still worries that the tent will be empty.

Her annual anxiety is so predictable that her friends and confidants come to rely on it occurring just before the season begins, as this year’s did July 17. Even Woods knows her behavior is a little odd and unwarranted, but that’s all part of the stress of having her creation’s success be subject to the whims of others.

“I still get nervous and ask, ‘Do you think anyone is going to come,’” she said during a brief respite from rehearsals and organization the Monday before the tent flaps were raised to the public.

“I really didn’t know I was going to be doing it again after that first year,” she later added. “I was only going to be here one year.”

A year turned into half a dozen, and likely many more years will follow. She is already planning the 2016 and 2017 seasons, for good reason.

Woods can likely rest assured that seats will be filled. Barring some act of God, people will come in droves just as they have since it first opened in 2009. Last year, the festival counted in excess of 3,000 people who visited the tent over a two-month season. Lacking a turnstile or tickets to count heads, the festival volunteers and staff use click counters as visitors enter the tent through a few open slats.

This year’s season spans 31 days of performances across three months, and organizers expect to have filled seats for most of their performances.

Some 300 people were turned away in 2014. At capacity, the 2,400-square-foot tent, affectionately named Henry, can seat 300 people. A more comfortable seating arrangement allows for about 200 people.

So, it seems highly unlikely that the seats will be empty for Woods’ direction of “The Tempest.”

During a 90-minute interview the week “The Tempest” opened, Woods walked into Henry the Tent, showing off the work done for the stage. First, she sat in the front row, just a couple of seats away from the middle. After a couple of breaths, she moved to where she truly belongs — the stage.

Woods has spent most of her life around theater. Much of her career has been spent with one of her great loves, an Englishman some four centuries her senior.

“I’m enamored with this guy named William who wrote these plays 450 years ago,” she said.

The steady growth from Shakespeare in the park to Shakespeare in the tent is credited to Woods by longtime festival board members and colleagues. That the Woods-led Whidbey festival has expanded and achieved success came as no surprise to one fellow Shakespeare festival artistic director in California.

“It takes extraordinary passion and vision,” said Rebecca Ennals, artistic director of the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. “Vision is what she has. She always looks to the biggest, most full, brightest future possible.”

“She just has faith,” Ennals added.

Like many artists before her, Woods takes chances to create an experience and evoke emotion from her audience. Joy, dread, sorrow, whatever the plays can pull from spectators is fine with Woods.

“I don’t need people to like it or not like it,” she said. “I want them to feel something.”

“Art connects us to ourselves,” she added. “Art connects us to something other than ourselves.”

The ability of Woods to draw in viewers and make the dated syntax and Shakespearean speech applicable and understandable is what sold one of the festival’s board members into supporting it with her time and money. Rene Neff, who has been on the board for three years, said she was not a fan of The Bard’s works until she saw “Romeo and Juliet” at Island Shakespeare Festival a few years ago.

“We’ve seen Shakespeare in different venues and never been much interested in it,” Neff said, taking a break from strewing hay across the field to cover recently filled low spots with sand and dirt.

“She’s a compelling person,” she later added. “She has such a deep love and enthusiasm for words and Shakespeare that you love it too.”

Woods, for her part in the festival’s growth, takes less than a second before crediting everyone else around her in the company: the production crew for building the stage and creating costumes and makeup, the directors and actors for taking months out of their schedule to help fulfill her vision, the businesses that fund the festival and the homes that open their doors to the cast and crew coming from off the island.

Being a woman in the theater business means Woods knows that parts aren’t always adequate or fulfilling or plentiful. She has taken it upon herself to cast the best person for the role, regardless of race or gender, so long as the meaning isn’t lost. That means she would never take away the racial element of “Othello” or the gender issues of “Much Ado About Nothing.” Most everything else, however, can be changed, she said. In this season, 11 women and 10 male actors make up the stage company.

“There are more male playwrights, more male roles,” she said of theater in general. “We sort of tip the apple cart.”

Having founded the festival with little more than a dream and a few backers, Woods was more than the director. She did the casting, found the production help to build the stage, made costumes, did makeup and hair, and handled marketing and fundraising — just about everything short of actually acting on stage.

“I’ve sewn curtains,” Woods said, followed by a quick laugh. “I was just sewing costumes.”

Just a few feet behind her are books thickly painted in single hues of blue, green, yellow, red, orange, black and brown. Some prop up an old cabin door used as an angled, raised platform in center stage. The few dozen books were stacked as blocking and visual cues and props. Those, too, were partly procured and painted by Woods and others in the festival company.

“We’re a roll-up-your-sleeves company,”  she said. “I think we always will be.”

With the growth of the festival in recent years, the group’s staff has increased, allowing Woods to leave behind some of those tasks. She remains the overseer of the event but can still be found hammering in stakes for the tent, grabbing chairs or spreading straw around the field.

“I see her out here working from 8 a.m. in the morning to 10  p.m. at night,” Neff said.

The season runs from mid-July to mid-September this year. Even though it covers about 30 performances, planning for each season is a year-round occupation for Woods. The 2016 productions are already set, and the 2017 plays are beginning to take shape.

Even as she continues to expand her “big picture” role as the artistic director and brings in outside help to direct other productions, Woods said she will always direct at least one of the plays.

“I didn’t choose theater, theater chose me,” Woods said.

“You’ve got to have a good amount of faith and a big dollop of crazy,” she added.

Island Shakespeare Festival

Two performances await patrons this season: “The Tempest” and “The Three Musketeers,” the latter representing the first foray away from William Shakespeare’s work.

All performances begin promptly at 5 p.m., with no late seating or admission. Tent opens at 4:15 p.m., with first-come, first-served seating. Performances run Thursday-Sunday every week, except for Aug. 6-9, through Sept. 13. The tent is near the elementary school in Langley.

By July 30, the performances alternate days, with “The Tempest” on July 30 and “The Three Musketeers” on July 31.

For schedule, visit www.islandshakespearefest.org