William Shakespeare, poet-playwright of the centuries, author of towering masterpieces like Hamlet, Richard III, Romeo & Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titus Andronicus, King Lear.
This weekend Shakespeare's R & J will be on stage at Fresno Soap, presented by Curtain 5. Shakespeare's R & J, is an adaptation by Joe Calarco, directed by J. Daniel Herring, Professor of Theatre Arts and Director of the Theatre Department at Fresno State University. We interviewed J. Daniel and the cast about the show.
It’s summertime in Fresno, and that means Shakespeare in the Park. The Woodward Shakespeare Festival is back for its thirteenth season of free Shakespeare performances, but don’t get superstitious. WSF opens with a lively, modern-dress version of Twelfth Night on the Festival Stage that deserves to be seen.
It is almost time for another season of the Woodward Shakespeare Festival in Fresno, so we took some time to sit down with their executive producer Greg Taber to chat about the new season.
Charlotte is the costumer for the Catskills Shakespeare Theater Company. It sounds like a peaceful job: sewing, repairing, and making sure costumes are ready for quick changes. Not so in real life. It’s hectic as this year it also involves a wedding. Once a year, the company performs for one night only as a fundraiser at Paula Van Dusen’s estate. This year her daughter, Belinda, is marrying Adrian, hardly her mother’s first choice as a husband.
In this day and age, William Shakespeare is often met with either reverence or disdain. Being considered one of the world's greatest playwrights doesn't always mean that everyone enjoys long soliloquies and men in tights.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead at the Woodward Shakespeare Festival is…
It’s like…
If you watch one of those food contests on TV where they give the chefs a strange set of ingredients and tell them to make something delicious, someone might tell the judges they have made a deconstructed dish, where the parts are disconnected and have to be mixed by the diner. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern is Tom Stoppard’s deconstructed Hamlet, pulling apart the Shakespeare masterwork and seeing what the audience will make of it.
There’s a whole lot of Hamlet goin’ on! The Woodward Shakespeare Festival has the Melancholy Dane onstage, while the Good Company Second Space pokes fun at him with I Hate Hamlet. The WSF’s second and final play of the season will be another riff on something-is-rotten-in-the-state-of-Denmark, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Shakespeare is really busy these days, 400 years after his death.
Another summer of the Woodward Shakespeare Festival begins June 16 in Fresno so we took some time to chat with their executive producer for the past 5 years, Greg Taber, about the 2016 season.
This weekend, for 2 performances only, Fresno Pacific University will present Dark as the Night, Selections from Shakespeare. We took a moment to chat about the show with the director, Brooke Aiello, who is an Adjunct Theatre Professor and Costume Shop Coordinator at FPU.
