Theater
Tulane Shakespeare Festival
By Trip McCormickTulane Shakespeare Festival
May 29 – August 2
Tulane University
Lupin Theatre &
McWilliams Hall Lab Theatre
Call box office for tickets
865-5105
neworleansshakespeare.com
The Tulane Shakespeare Festival, now a stalwart of the New Orleans summer theater schedule, makes its triumphant return this month in celebration of its 15th season. To mark the anniversary, festival organizers have chosen a timeless theme with local flavor: The Battle of the Sexes in New Orleans! While the festival stretches throughout the summer months, June offers three performances to get the ball rolling.
Beginning May 29th with two nights of previews, The Taming of the Shrew opens the Shakespeare Festival’s program. This energetic adaptation of the Bard’s classic and famously controversial tale of Petruccio’s epic struggle to rein in the tempestuous Kate returns to the stage following a successful preview in January. Set to the music of Louis Prima, this lighthearted update is set in 1950’s New Orleans, with Petruccio and Kate acting as centerpieces for the vibrant Italian-American culture of that era. Lorenzo Gonzalez and Rebecca Frank reprise their roles as the featured characters. The official opening night performance on May 31st includes a post-show gala celebrating the festival’s 15th season. Shrew runs through June 14.
Closing out June and taking the main stage into July is the pastoral comedy As You Like It. Local wunderkind actor/director Sean Patterson has re-imagined Shakespeare’s magical Arden Forest as a city park (not the City Park, necessarily) of the 1930’s for the setting of this timeless tale of star-crossed, crisscrossed, and cross-dressed lovers. Local favorites Trina Beck, James Bartelle, and Lara Grice star. The opening night performance on June 28th includes a post-show reception with the cast.
Also beginning this month, the festival brings back its popular Lagniappe Stage series with Mad Wenches, and Wondrous Froward Women. The presentation features a series of new plays by female playwrights that explore the world of Shakespeare and Elizabethan England. The plays will be performed as readings.
Later this summer, the TSF high school training program, All Things Shakespeare, presents one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, Twelfth Night. A shipwreck, loves assumed to be lost, and a healthy dose of gender confusion all contribute to the chaos. The result, instead of a love triangle, turns out to be a shape with many more points, as each character finds him or herself chasing an unrequited love. Twelfth Night runs July 23-26.
Also in July, the Lagniappe Stage moves into its second feature, What, Has This Thing Happened Again Tonight? Conceived, written and directed by festival Associate Artistic Director Jim Fitzmorris, the performance teams the Shakespeare Festival with the NOLA Project Theatre Company in a joint production to search for artistic inspiration in the face of disaster following Hurricane Katrina. The performance closes out the Festival, running July 25-August 2.
Mainstage productions are held in Tulane University’s Lupin Theatre. Lagniappe Stage productions are held in Tulane’s McWilliams Hall Lab Theatre.
For more info, go to www.neworleansshakespeare.com