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Schedule Update
Shakespeare News will publish on Tuesdays while I’m associate directing Great Expectations and Midsummer for The Acting Company. Come see!
December 3-21, 2025 – Rubicon Theatre Company, Ventura, CA
January 13, 2026 – State Theatre New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ
January 15-16, 2026 – Virginia Arts Festival, Norfolk, VA
January 20, 2026 – Radford University, Radford, VA
January 23-24, 2026 – Wortham Center for the Arts, Asheville, NC
January 27-28, 2026 – The Library Theatre, Hoover Public Library, Hoover, AL
January 30-31, 2026 – University of Georgia, Athens, GA
February 3, 2026 – Weidner Center for the Performing Arts, Green Bay, WI
February 5-7, 2026 – Great Lakes Center for the Arts, Bay Harbor, MI
February 11-12, 2026 – Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
February 14-17, 2026 – Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS
February 19, 2026 – Wayne State College, Wayne, NE
February 25-March 1, 2026† Queens Theatre, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, NY
Quick Links
A Santa Fe art gallery Hamlet with “mind-bending revenge, supernatural sensations, and yes…there are jumpscares.”2
“I was playing Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet, and they were like, “Hey, do you have or want an agent?” (Oh Keanu.)
A new kind of Shakespeare tragedeigh.
“Technically, it’s not a new concept…Slagen says that riffing on names…goes back even further to William Shakespeare who Slagen says invented the name Jessica, the 775th most-popular girls’ name in 2025 as of this writing, according to Babycenter. Some scholars speculate that Shakespeare anglicized the name from the original Hebrew name “Jesca.”
Nobody Would Edit Shakespeare, Right? Right?
“This edition eliminates references to Rosaline (Romeo’s initial love interest), reduces the role of Mercutio and, most notably, adds a 67-line final conversation between Romeo and Juliet.”3
Measure for Measure at the RSC. (more)
An opening screen montage designed by Zakk Hein includes leaders whose reigns have been rocked by sex scandals (such as Bill Clinton and Donald Trump) as well as images of Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew.
Life goal: do enough Shakespeare in the Parks to forget a couple.
- talk to Whitney White about her Shakespeare work.
Playwright Martin Sherman’s origins:
By Sherman’s reckoning, his mother gave him two important gifts: First, she took him to the theatre in Philadelphia at a young age (and soon after allowed him to go by himself), and second, she bought him a used edition of Shakespeare’s plays.
Muppet Macbeth. (via Edel Semple)
“When I did “Romeo and Juliet,” I really got into fitness.” (helpful link)
He said Juliet’s line “Speakest thou from the heart?” seemed to have even more depth in this incarnation. Juliet says the line in Welsh: “Ai dyna iaith dy galon?”, which translates literally as “Is that your heart’s language?”, subtly different to the original.
I recall the night we attended a performance at St. Ann’s Warehouse of Lolita Chakrabarti’s Red Velvet, directed by Indhu Rubasingam, and how excited he was to meet the cast. He spoke to each one of them about how they approached their roles. On the ride back to Manhattan, he turned to me and said, “Phil, how I wish I had returned to the stage when I was younger.”
Marlowe would have smelled strong and musky with a hit of ginger and Shakespeare would have smelled like “a bunch of flowers.” (via Gemma Allred)
Macbeth set on a Year 11 interschool netball team. (also via Gemma Allred)
Hamlet but out of order and with a sprinkle of Lorca and Genet.
English Kings Killing Foreigners at Soho Theatre.
A theatrical vendetta against Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” English Kings Killing Foreigners is a scrappy, headstrong two-hander interrogating theatre’s role in politics and protest. “All the flags,” Nina Bowers waves her hands, “isn’t it a bit National Front?”
A new Richard III-inspired play set in Miles Davis’ house.
“Power” explores East St. Louis — a city that carries the legacy of legendary artists and athletes, as well as the stigma of political corruption and the 1917 Race Massacre. Loosely inspired by Shakespeare’s Richard III, “Power” follows “Richard” on his attempted rise to East St. Louis mayor.
Costume sidebar: Merry Wives at STC4 and Romeo and Juliet + Two Gents at ASC.
All the videos from the Globe’s Shakespeare and Environmental Justice Symposium are now available.
It’s ultimately the story about how Ajax and Patroclus end up becoming the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good.
Commonwealth Shakespeare’s apprentices.
I had never been to Boston before, this is my first time in the city and I love
it here so much that I’m staying.
Shakespeare and Freud with Stephen Greenblatt on the Stratford Festival podcast.
Has anyone read Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls? via
& .Like Charlie and Fran, I too spent one sixth-form summer performing with a youth Shakespeare troupe. Nicholls captures the excruciating struggle between the teenage desire – nay, need – to be perceived as cool at all times, and the cringeworthy sincerity needed to perform. The moment his protagonist gives himself over to the Full Fathom Five Theatre Co-Operative, his world opens up, just as mine did.
…then to the King’s Theatre, where we saw “Midsummer’s Night’s Dream,” which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life. I saw, I confess, some good dancing and some handsome women, which was all my pleasure.
Recommendations
Electric corsets via
.
Like this one.
American Theatre Magazine on an earlier iteration:
They start problem-solving: Should they maybe spray Hamlet down with water rather than use cups? What is the desired action Hamlet wants when she strips off Claudius’s blindfold? How does Cladius attack his niece? They’re not trying to cement a script, but rather home in on what they call a “roadmap.”
Why would you reduce Mercutio? Reduce Paris, reduce the Nurse, for the love of all that is good please PLEASE reduce the Friar. But let poor Mercutio go home to his truckle bed.