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.

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

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.