Southwest Shakespeare Company
By Bill Cain
Feb. 28 – March 22, 2014
Anita Farnsworth Theater
Mesa Arts Center
1 East Main Street, Mesa, AZ 85201
(480) 644 6500
In London, 1605, a down-and-out playwright called Shagspeare receives a royal commission to write a play promoting the government’s version of the Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot. As Shag navigates the dangerous course between writing a lie or losing his head, his devoted theatre troupe helps him negotiate each step along the way.
KING LEAR – Theater For A New Audience, Brooklyn, NY
By William Shakespeare
Direction: Arin Arbus
Featuring: Michael Pennington
Scenic Designer: Riccardo Hernandez
Costume Designer: Susan Hilferty
Lighting Designer: Marcus Doshi
Composer: Michael Attias
March 14 – May 4, 2014
[button url=”http://www.tfana.org/tickets” target=”blank”]Buy Tickets[/button]Considered to be one of the greatest plays in the English language, King Lear tells the story of a savage familial power struggle that follows Lear’s misguided decision to apportion his kingdom before his death.
For Arin Arbus, the play’s taut intertwining of the political and the personal and its breathtaking power to distill an entire complex world into a story of two families is riveting. Moreover, she finds “its radical political assertions remarkable. Shakespeare challenges the very foundations of Western civilization, pointing out the absurdity of privilege, entitlement, social and economic hierarchies, and man’s assertion of his power over nature.”
This production is sponsored by Deloitte.
Syracuse Shakespeare Festival
April 4 – April 14, 2014
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Our second plunge into 17th century French comedy gives us even more laughs than last year’s Molierean tickler. It’s another comedy by a French icon, The Suitors, by Jean Racine, Judith Harris directing; one of the most hilarious French plays ever written, Racine’s only comedy (1688), tells of a judge named Nigaud who has lost his mind from overwork but is still possessed with the desire to go to court and try cases day and night. After a brief intermission the second half of this double bill gives you, Commedia dell’Arte, Lynn Barbato directing; the roots of improvisation date back to 16th century Italy where “stock” character types mocked social conventions and they’ll be mocking unconventionally for your laughter and delight.
The Shakespeare Theater Company
Sidney Harman Hall
Henry IV, Part 1
Directed by Michael Kahn
March 25 – June 7, 2014
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“The better part of valor is, discretion.”
A young prince must decide between tavern roughhousing and the burden of his father’s legacy, in the coming-of-age story of heroism, corruption and war. STC Artistic Director Michael Kahn directs the masterful Stacy Keach (King Lear, Macbeth) who plays Shakespeare’s beloved character, Falstaff.
Southwest Shakespeare Company
May 15 – June 1, 2014
Desert Botanical Garden
1201 N. Galvin Parkway, Phoenix, AZ
A new adaptation of Shakespeare’s immortal A Midsummer Night’s Dream in partnership with the Desert Botanical Garden.
This new vision will include bold visual elements, stunning costumes, lighting and stage magic designed to highlight the Garden. Two seating options are available: general admission and reserved bistro seating for four. If you would like reserved seating, let us seat you at a bistro table. Guests can purchase food & a full cash bar will be available.
THE KILLER – Theater For A New Audience, Brooklyn, NC
By Eugène Ionesco
Newly Translated: Michael Feingold
Direction: Darko Tresnjak
Featuring Michael Shannon
May 17-June 29, 2014
[button url=”http://www.tfana.org/tickets” target=”blank”]Buy Tickets[/button]A searing and darkly funny parable about violence and resistance, Ionesco’s The Killer premiered in Paris in 1959 and has become a modern classic of the Theatre of the Absurd. Berenger, Ionesco’s cheerful, well-meaning everyman, discovers a “radiant city” near his dismal urban home, a perpetually sunny, impeccably clean place full of marvelous architecture and delicious food. The one hitch: a serial murderer has been brazenly killing people there for so long that the authorities have given up trying to catch him.
Oscar nominee (Revolutionary Road) Michael Shannon plays Berenger. Our production will bring out the humor and taut film noir aura of this work, underscoring the cinematic allure of the murders, the futile chase, the bungled investigation and the climactic confrontation with the criminal. The exquisitely simple approach will spotlight powerful, precise acting and spare, sculptural design.