Shakespeare & Company Announces 2013 Summer Season

Following a record-breaking 35th Season, Shakespeare & Company Artistic Director Tony Simotes is pleased to announce the 2013 summer lineup of plays that will take place in the Tina Packer Playhouse and the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, including a number of special events that will underscore those productions. The highlights of the 2013 Summer Season include two full productions of Shakespeare: Love's Labour's Lost and Richard II, both of which will be performed for the first time on the Tina Packer Playhouse stage, as well as the previously announced Mother Courage and Her Children, directed by Simotes and starring Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis, Apollo Dukakis, and OBIE Award winner John Douglas Thompson. Tickets will go on sale on February 14, 2013, and can be purchased online at www.shakespeare.org or by calling 413-637-3353.

For press-related inquiries and interviews, please contact Greg Hughes, Associate Director of Communications, at 413-637-1199 ext. 145 or ghughes@shakespeare.org.

PHOTOS: http://www.shakespeare.org/gallery3/index.php/2013

2013 Summer Season
Tina Packer PLAYHOUSE
Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare's hilarious romp of wit, will open the summer season in the Tina Packer Playhouse, receiving its first main stage production at 70 Kemble Street. Under the direction of Lisa Wolpe, Love's Labour's Lost will feature Mark Bedard, who is making his S&Co. debut, and Company favorite Jonathan Croy (King Lear). Wolpe is the Producing Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company, an all-female Shakespeare company that recently won the "Sustained Excellence" award from the Los Angeles Critics Circle. She returns to Shakespeare & Company, where she last played Sicinius, Brutus, and Valeria in Coriolanus (2001).

The Tina Packer Playhouse will also feature a special limited run of Shakespeare's rarely produced history play, Richard II, directed by longtime Shakespeare & Company member Timothy Douglas, featuring three-time OBIE Award winner Rocco Sisto in the title role and Tom O'Keefe as his nemesis, Henry Bolingbroke. Sisto and O'Keefe were featured together in Joan Ackerman's The Taster, which received its critically acclaimed world premiere at Shakespeare & Company in 2010. This ambitious undertaking will mark the first time Shakespeare & Company has staged a full production of Richard II in its history, and the first in a series of history plays that Shakespeare & Company will produce leading up to its 40th Anniversary Season. Designed to present a cohesive look at Shakespeare's history plays, audiences will receive a rare chance to enjoy these stunning plays and take a unique, episodic journey that will span five seasons.

Bertolt Brecht's timeless and profound statement on war, Mother Courage and Her Children, will continue the strong lineup in The Playhouse.The trio of Artistic Director Tony Simotes, Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis and her brother, Apollo Dukakis, will reteam after their successful collaboration on The Tempest, which enjoyed a sold-out run in The Playhouse this past summer. Joining the cast will be OBIE Award winner John Douglas Thompson, the star of last summer's Satchmo at the Waldorf. Thompson's classical work, which includes performances as the titles roles in both Othello and Richard III at Shakespeare & Company, has prompted The New York Times to describe him as "one of the most compelling classical stage actors of his generation." Olympia Dukakis has previously performed the role of Mother Courage to great critical acclaim. She recently completed a run in the title role of Elektra at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, CA.

More Articles by This Author...