Abrons Arts Center

February 4, 2014 – February 23, 2014

Directed by Charles McMahon

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Hailed as a “wild rumpus of a show” by The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pig Iron Theatre Company’s raucous, spirited Twelfth Night breathes new life into the Bard’s classic.
With equal measures of absurdity and heart, the company fuses their distinctive physical performance style with Shakespeare’s text, creating an exhilarating version replete with practical jokes, gender confusion, and mistaken identity. This exuberant, unpredictable, award-winning production is definitely not your grandparent’s Shakespeare.

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA 
By William Shakespeare 
Edited and Directed by Tarell Alvin McCraney 
February 18 – March 23, 2014 

In an exciting international collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company and GableStage, Miami, The Public welcomes back writer/director Tarell Alvin McCraney (The Brother/Sister Plays) as its new artist in residence with ANTONY & CLEOPATRA. At the fringes of a war-torn empire, a man and a woman have fallen desperately, passionately in love. But for a soldier set to enforce the imperial will and the queen of a people intent on throwing off the yoke of empire, there is no place for personal desire. McCraney creates a stripped down, radical new version of Shakespeare’s gripping story of romance set against a world of imperial politics and power play and transports us to 18th century, sun-soaked Saint-Domingue on the eve of revolution. RSC in America is presented in collaboration with The Ohio State University.

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

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.

In the summer of 1974, the Brady and Partridge Families, recently canceled by ABC and no longer under America’s watchful eye, met in a blood-soaked, passion-filled, vengeance-fueled, very special episode of Shakespearean proportions.

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.