Folger Theatre News

Connecticut Repertory Theatre opens HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING this week led by Fred Grandy (TV's The Love Boat, The Mindy Project) and Broadway's Riley Costello (13, Bye, Bye Birdie, Everyday Rapture).

Constellation Theatre's adult puppet musical Avenue Q swept the 32nd annual Helen Hayes Awards honoring professional theater in Washington, D.C., on Monday with seven awards including outstanding musical.

Tonight, before a gathering of theatre artists and patrons, theatreWashington announced the winners of the 2016 Helen Hayes Awards, drawn from 202 eligible productions presented in the 2015 calendar year. Scroll down for the full list of nominees and winners!

Mad Horse Theatre Company wraps its 30th Anniversary Season with the smart, sassy comedy Stupid F**ing Bird, by Aaron Posner, directed by Christopher Price.

Connecticut Repertory Theatre (CRT) announces a change in the casting for their production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, the musical comedy by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser.

The Pearl Theatre Company has announced programming for the 2016-17 season. All four productions will take place at The Pearl Theater (555 West 42nd Street.)

Gulfshore Playhouse (www.GulfshorePlayhouse.org) - Southwest Florida's premier professional theatre - is pleased to announce its upcoming production of The Who and the What, a poignant and funny play about identity, religion, and the contradictions that make us who we are from Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ayad Akhtar, scheduled for tonight, April 30, through May 15 at The Norris Center in Naples.

It would be quite the coup to talk to the guys who found the long lost first play of a 17-year-old Will Shakespeare. Let me know if that ever happens to you. For my part, I'd actually prefer what I got, which was a great conversation with Austin Tichenor and Reed Martin, the guys who are pretending they found the long lost first play of a 17-year-old Will Shakespeare. At their request and in their words, I will emphasize this point…”We're pretending…We did not find a play! It's a joke!” Point taken.

Gulfshore Playhouse (www.GulfshorePlayhouse.org) - Southwest Florida's premier professional theatre - is pleased to announce its upcoming production of The Who and the What, a poignant and funny play about identity, religion, and the contradictions that make us who we are from Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ayad Akhtar, scheduled for April 30 through May 15 at The Norris Center in Naples.

There is but poor substitute for a trio of fools on a romp to entertain; nay, but it is futility at its finest to resist the siren call of slapstick's song. Anyone else have the urge to, as I call it, "Shakespeak" after an evening of Shakespeare? No? Just me? Ok, well no matter. In any pentameter, the Reduced Shakespeare Company's (RSC) Reed Martin, Austin Tichenor and Teddy Spencer are very, very funny; fearless, quick witted, masters of quick change and, most importantly, having a blast on stage, which means the audience is likely to have fun too. The RSC has a long history of taking gargantuan themes (think American history, The Bible, Hollywood) and mining them for laughs, and, inspired by a 2010 visit to the Folger, creating a work that covered the Shakespearean universe in one "holy grail" of a play, seemed an obvious mission to them.

Concluding its highly successful 2015/16 season, Folger Theatre stages the world premiere of District Merchants, a variation of Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice. Commissioned by Folger Theatre as part of the 2016 celebration of 400 years of Shakespeare and in tandem with the Folger exhibition America's Shakespeare, playwright Aaron Posner sets this new exploration of class and difference in our own political place of power, Washington, D.C., just after the Civil War.

Gulfshore Playhouse (www.GulfshorePlayhouse.org) - Southwest Florida's premier professional theatre - is pleased to announce its upcoming production of The Who and the What, a poignant and funny play about identity, religion, and the contradictions that make us who we are from Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ayad Akhtar, scheduled for April 30 through May 15 at The Norris Center in Naples.

The wonderfully inventive and wildly hilarious Reduced Shakespeare Company® (RSC) returns to Folger Theatre for the eagerly anticipated world premiere of William Shakespeare's Long Lost First Play (abridged). The RSC will bring their signature style (dubbed 'intellectual vaudeville' by The New York Times) of witty wordplay and physical finesse to the Folger for a limited engagement from April 21 through May 8, 2016. 

George Street Playhouse presents Aaron Posner's MY NAME IS ASHER LEV, which runs tonight, April 12, through May 1 at the New Brunswick theatre. Miles G. Jackson (4000 Miles) will portray the titular Jewish artist Asher Lev, who must be a painter despite his faith and the will of his family.

Having just completed successful and critically acclaimed runs of Pericles and A Midsummer Night's Dream, Artistic Producer Janet Alexander Griffin today announced the program for Folger Theatre's upcoming twenty-fifth anniversary season.

Malibu Playhouse continues their 2016 season with another limited-run critically acclaimed production: The Pavilion written by Craig Wright, the creator and executive producer of the dramatic series, Greenleaf, the first original series produced by Oprah Winfrey, which will begin airing in June. The Pavilion is helmed by Jeremy Skidmore, world renowned theater director and current Guest Artistic Director of the Malibu Playhouse.

The regional premiere of the 2014 award-winning drama, The Body of An American, written by Guggenheim Fellow Dan O'Brien, plays at Theater J April 27 through May 22, 2016. This bold, radically theatrical, and poetic true story is the winner of the inaugural Edward M. Kennedy Prize, the Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play, and the PEN Center USA Award for Drama.

? Peninsula Players Theatre will present a reading of "Who Am I This Time? (& Other Conundrums of Love)" by Aaron Posner, adapted from stories by Kurt Vonnegut at Bjorklunden at 7590 Boynton Lane, Baileys Harbor at 7p.m., Monday, April 4.  Posner's charming comedy explores love, pure and complicated, by weaving short stories from Vonnegut's early masterpiece "Welcome to the Monkey House."   Join the Players reading of comedic love stories that explores, with warm hilarity, human foibles in a small town.  Admission is free.

The UofSC Department of Theatre and Dance will present The Tempest, William Shakespeare's masterful tale of revenge and redemption, April 15-23 at Drayton Hall Theatre. 

?The UofSC Department of Theatre and Dance will host Gravedigger's Tale, an interactive retelling of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, April 21-23 at Longstreet Theatre.