Shakespeare & Company welcomes Olympia Dukakis and Campbell Scott09:29AM / Wednesday, August 19, 2009
LENOX, Mass. - Shakespeare & Company Artistic Director Tony Simotes today announced the titles for the popular, 15th annual Studio Festival of Plays—the biggest yet! The annual Festival is a mini-marathon of plays new to the Company running ONE DAY ONLY in Founders’ Theatre on Monday, September 7 beginning at 11:30 am and running through 11pm.
Seven productions featuring Company actors and special guest actors will be presented throughout the day as works-in-progress and staged readings. A special Benefit reading of William Bigelow’s new play, Leap Year, featuring Olympia Dukakis and directed by Simotes, will kick off the Festival series a week early on Monday, August 31st at 7:00pm (separate release to follow). As in the past, members of the media are welcome to attend the Festival but works are not open to review.
Tickets for Festival productions are a $16 suggested donation per show, or a $60 suggested donation for a Festival Pass which gives admittance to all 7 performances. For information call the Box Office at (413) 637-3353 or visit the newly redesigned website at www.shakespeare.org.
As part of Shakespeare & Company’s commitment to nurturing new voices in theatre and presenting cutting edge works, the Festival is an annual vehicle for exploring new plays and plays that may receive full productions in a future season. The plays are presented as workshop readings, with varying degrees of staging and production elements.
“The Festival is really an opportunity for us to embrace and generate opportunities for new voices to be heard,” says Simotes. “As well as continuing to nurture collaboration between actors, directors and designers of all backgrounds. By featuring these newer voices we bring vitality and exploration to our theatre and our audience’s perception of language in this new century.”
Over the past fourteen years, the Festival has presented many works that subsequently were given full productions in the Company’s regular season, including Mrs. Klein, Fortune and Misfortune, Laughing Wild, Goodnight Desdemona Good Morning Juliet, The Turn of the Screw, Brief Lives, Betrayal, The Mistress, Wit, Summer, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), A Tanglewood Tale, The Scarlet Letter, Ice Glen, Hamlet, Martha Mitchell Calling, No Background Music, The Goatwoman of Corvis County and last year’s hits of the Festival The Dreamer Examines His Pillow and White People are currently receiving full productions along with 2007 Festival favorite Devil’s Advocate in the new Elayne P. Bernstein theatre.
“I’ve tried to include pieces that embody what these new stories are,” adds Simotes, “that help define and redefine ourselves—much like Shakespeare did during his day, when the world was in the chaos of discovery during the Renaissance. Producing great works with great language will always be the core of our mission”, says Simotes. |
