The Old Globe

February 8 – March 16, 2014

Directed by Barry Edelstein

[button target=”http://www.theoldglobe.org/tickets/production.aspx?performanceNumber=10454″]Buy Tickets[/button]

NPR calls Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein “one of the country’s leading Shakespeareans.” Now Edelstein’s work takes center stage in his Old Globe directorial debut with Shakespeare’s most enchanting masterpiece, featuring a powerful musical score written expressly for the production by acclaimed classical composer Michael Torke. The Winter’s Talesweeps breathtakingly from tragedy to comedy and along the way visits kings and queens, dancing shepherds, a most extraordinary statue, and one notoriously hungry bear, before it reaches its stunning, magical conclusion.

Chicago Shakespeare Festival

February 22 – March 22, 2014

Director: David H. Bell

[button url=”http://www.chicagoshakes.com/plays_and_events/ssdream#sthash.nYv8mFRx.dpuf” target=”blank”]Buy Tickets[/button]

A magical forest filled with a host of some of Shakespeare’s most comedic characters make A Midsummer Night’s Dream one of his most popular plays. CST’s 75-minute abridged Short Shakespeare! production serves as an ideal introduction to the Bard—for audiences of all ages. When lovers cross with mischievous sprites in an enchanted forest, a series of mishaps occur and nothing is what it seems. Add to the mix a bevy of fumbling actors and chaos breaks loose until dawn breaks and all is once again right with the world. After the performance, the actors remain on stage for a brief question-and-answer session. Then join the audience in the Lobby for one-on-one conversations and photo opportunities.

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.

Chicago Shakespeare Festival

March 13 – May 4, 2014

Directed by Gary Griffin

[button url=”Ticket: http://www.chicagoshakes.com/plays_and_events/roadshow#sthash.rCQ0Hj79.dpuf” target=”blank”]Buy Tickets[/button]

Associate Artistic Director Gary Griffin brings you not one, but two musicals, Gypsy and Road Show, that feature the extraordinary talents of Stephen Sondheim—both inspired by real stories of ambitious Americans in pursuit of their dreams. Based on the lives of the boldly enterprising brothers Addison and Wilson Mizner, the musical journey of Road Show spans forty years—from the Alaskan Gold Rush to the Florida real estate boom in the 1930s. Traversing the continent in a variety of get-rich-quick schemes, the brothers stick together through experiences that change their lives in unexpected ways.

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.

Seattle Shakespeare Company

March 19-Apr. 13, 2014

Directed by Victor Pappas

[button url=”http://www.seattleshakespeare.org/season-and-tickets/” target=”blank”]Buy Tickets[/button]

Oscar Wilde’s outlandish masterpiece is one of the cleverest comedies in the English language. Dapper Jack Worthing and Algernon, his compatriot in cavorting, have fallen for two ladies who have their hearts set on marrying a man named Ernest. In order to pursue the romance, both men concoct an elaborate deception which leads to an even more outlandish surprise when the formidable Lady Bracknell starts sleuthing about for the far-fetched truth.