Thank you for visiting our archive. Each performance submitted to our website will be explained in detail in its own blog post. You can choose to look through these posts in a variety of ways.
Morecambe’s first Shakespearean festival is set to run over the weekend of Shakespeare’s birthday. Alongside theatrical performances there will also be music, dance events, art and poetry readings. The theatrical productions include: Twelve Nights; Romeo and Juliet; Shakespearean Murder Mystery; Puck’s Dream; A Shakespeare Gallery; Henry V; The Tempest; and The Play’s the Thing.
Read Morehis performance is part of the 2016 Shakespeare 400 celebrations in Ottawa.
“Four centuries after Shakespeare’s death, his plays are well known but little detail remains of his home life in Stratford. Vern Thiessen imagines this world, bringing us history in a modern idiom. Meet Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway - a woman to remember.”
In honor of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, the the Reduced Shakespeare Company has penned their tenth play, which will debut at the Folger Theatre in April. "The Return of the Reduced Shakespeare Company" is an exciting headline for the Folger Shakespeare Library’s 2016 season.
Read MoreThe Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)
Presented in English
Lunchbox Theatre, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
April 19 – 24, 2016
The Shakespeare Company
by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield
Directed by Kevin McKendrick
Also on Tour:
The Beddington Community Arts Centre (the home of StoryBook Theatre)
Local schools for 18 performances
Selected Review:
http://www.calgarysun.com/2016/04/21/the-complete-works-of-william-shakespeare-abridged-is-pure-comedy
“What was the music lesson like during the Elizabethan period? The Piano Pedagogy Research Laboratory will feature video clips and live performances on reproductions of early keyboard instruments.”
Musical Performance by Dr. Elaine Keillor.
Part of Ottawa's Shakespeare 400 "Lunchtime Shakespeare" series, which is a set of talks given by professors from different departments at the University of Ottawa about how Shakespeare intersects with their own fields in interesting ways.
Dominic Gerrard's play was commissioned for the V&A Performance Festival 2016. A theatrical tour, led by Malvolio, descends into lively chaos when Sir Toby gatecrashes it, and Maria gets caught in the middle of a ferocious argument. This promenade performance features the real Great Bed of Ware (part of the V&A collections), mentioned in Twelfth Night.
“Meet Malvolio who has been practising speeches all day for his tour of Lady Olivia's private collections but things very quickly start to go wrong once his guests arrive...”
Giuseppe Verdi's last opera is an ebullient comic masterpiece about a joyful knight. The work is based on Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor and is a humorous celebration of love and life. Set, directed by Ann-Margret Pettersson, premiered at the Opera in 2009 with a colorful stage design of the high esteem the artist Lennart Jirlow.
Read MoreThe Jack Studio Theatre is a space for companies to explore. They also boast their own in-house team, and have received multiple Off West End Nominations, including design nominations for such Shakespearean productions as Merchant of Venice, and Julius Caesar. This is Stubbs Hughes’ second adaptation and second production.
The Jack Studio Theatre is a space for companies to explore. They also boast their own in-house team, and have received multiple Off West End Nominations, including design nominations for such Shakespearean productions as Merchant of Venice, and Julius Caesar. This is Stubbs Hughes’ second adaptation and second production.
Puppet theatre for adults. Monika and Per travel through time to Shakespeare’s London to find the author of the world’s greatest love stories. Then Shakespeare falls in love with Monika. A triangular love drama develops. The production explores the way love influences people and art through Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis.
Read MoreThis performance explores Lady Macbeth in all her magnificent complexity. Four performers play facets of Lady Macbeth in constant conflict, using Kathak dance, movement, text from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Hindustani classical folk and tribal music to create a piece that is as much constantly improvised as directed in performance. With references to figures from Indian mythology such as Putana and Shakti, this piece examines what it means to be feminine or de-feminised through the contradictions within this complex character.
Read MoreThe Shakespeare Schools Festival South Africa is inspired by its UK predecessor. It brings together school children from around the country and offers them the opportunity to put on a production of one of the plays on the professional stage. The festival is an annual event that has been running since 2009.
Since the pilot in 2009, EduCape’ Shakespeare Schools Festival SA (SSF SA) has grown from 20 learners during the pilot performance to approximately 1500 youth across the country in the Western Provnce, Gauteng, Kwa-Zulu Natal and Eastern Cape.
This production was part of the events sponsored by Texas A&M University (College Station, TX) during the "First Folio: The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare" traveling exhibition. Texas A&M was selected to host an exhibit of Shakespeare's First Folio of 1623 from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. This exhibition was to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare, and one site in each state was selected to host the exhibit. This is a rarely seen 1710 German adaptation of Hamlet. Acting as a laboratory for Oxford Professor Tiffany Stern’s research, the Hidden Room uses a new English translation by Christine Schmidle, and puppets created by Los Angeles’ Mystery Bird Puppet Show to imagine the staging conditions of an 18th century puppet play.
Read More“Best intentions… are what Angelica and Emilia, two modern adaptations of the often overlooked women from Shakespeare's Othello and Romeo and Juliet, definitely had before they ended up trapped in a room with a kitten puzzle. They must now take this opportunity to look more closely at their lives, the choices they made and how they came to be in this place. Through reasoning, deduction and slowly revealing their dark secrets, they discover that escape will warrant some honesty, as their 'best intentions' are not an excuse in the eyes of the law.” --description from Fringe programme.
Read MoreThis event is a concert of new music inspired by William Shakespeare and created by students at the University of Ottawa.
Read MoreThe Winter's Tale. The Chronicles of Perdita is the first production of this Shakespeare comedy. It is made possible thanks to the sponsorship of the British Council (as part of their global project "Shakespeare Lives!"). The director has combined the play itself and the chronology of Ukrainian history:
Act 1: takes place in the time of Kievan Rus
Act 2: is connected to the period of Cossacks
Act 3: shows Ukraine as a part of the Russian Empire
Act 4: evokes modern time
Act 5: represents the present-day atmosphere
Such clear division is achieved with costumes that change from act to act. The unifying aspect of all the stage garments is that they each have elements made from transparent cellophane. This unexpected scenographic solution brings additional meaning to every act of the play; all the cast members seem as if naked, totally exposed to the spectators. Their secret dreams, desires and hopes are no secret any more. The performance is a bright mixture of Shakespearean text and modern Ukrainian context conveyed through brilliant acting and directing.
“Shakespeare's melancholy Prince of Denmark is brought to vivid life by an ensemble of 10 actors exploring the various pieces of work that make up the man. This reconstruction of one of the greatest English-language plays of all time will delve into the question of who is Hamlet and what makes him one of the most easily related to characters in all of theatrical literature.” –description from the company website
Read MoreA production of Bellini's version of the Romeo and Juliet story, by Pop-up Opera, an innovative touring opera company which aims to broaden the appeal of opera by taking it into usual spaces and challenging the way opera is performed.
Read More“The Tempest contains all the main themes of Shakespeare’s plays: the overthrow of the rightful ruler, the danger of moving from civilisation to barbarism, dreaming about regaining greatness, destructive passion and the sense and the need for creating theatre.
In Anna Augustynowicz’s Burza, we can also see a bitter tragi-comedy about contemporary civilisation. Through the orange life-jackets worn by the shipwrecked people brought by Prospero to the island where he lives, she makes reference to the tragedy of refugees – the greatest tragedy of our times.” --from daily “Kurier Szczeciński”
Read MoreAthens. Midnight. You have just seen your friendʼs head turned into that of an ass'. So, what do you do? In the middle of rehearsing a play five mechanicals drop their props, run into town, hit a dive bar, and figure out what to do next. Go back and get him? Carry on learning lines? Get a round in? After many questions, it becomes apparent that they may not have come back from the forest alone…
Action to the Word and Lower the Tone Theatre are proud to present a new play about the mechanicals from A Midsummer Night's Dream and what really happened after Bottom gained an ass's head. Part of Catford-upon-Avon Festival.
"Responding to the themes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet – but firmly set in modern-day Lewisham – LYT’s latest forum theatre play deals with difficult choices facing young people today. Created and performed by LYT’s Young Touring Company – a group of five creative trainees aged 16-24 – this interactive performance gives the audience a chance to make a better choice for the characters."
An interactive performance created by young actors from Lewisham Youth Theatre, a group based at the Broadway Theatre, Catford. Lewisham Youth Theatre is a registered charity funded by multiple sponsors. This is a free event for young people, presented as a part of Catford-upon-Avon Festival.
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
