Bad Quarto Productions to Stage New York Premiere of ANNA KARENINA LIVES!

Bad Quarto Productions, a theatre company specializing in performing modern theatre using Shakespearean staging techniques, will stage The New York premiere of Anna Karenina Lives!, a new vaudeville-style musical comedy by Germaine Shames, from October 14th - 22nd at 353 W. 48th St. in New York City.

Written by Germaine Shames, and previously performed as part of the Invisible Theatre's 2016 season, Anna Karenina Lives! is a musical comedy romp through time and space that sees vaudeville star Mae West team up with Sophia Tolstoy, widow to the famous novelist, to try to save Anna Karenina from being crushed by the stifling patriarchal forces of Tzarist Russia. Free love and vaudeville are their weapons of choice as Sophia tries to make up for past regrets, and Mae West tries to make sure the 20th century follows her example.

Bad Quarto Productions will present the play using its signature style of combining modern text work with Shakespearean staging conditions to illuminate modern works. Bad Quarto Productions' performances combine detailed understanding of language with the liveliness of improv to deliver a Shakespearean play-going experience.

Anna Karenina LIves! will play at Studios 353 (353 W. 48th St., New York) from October 14th through October 22nd on the following days and times:

Saturday, October 14th: 8 PM (preview performance)
Sunday, October 15th: 8 PM (preview performance)
Saturday. October 21st: 2 PM
Saturday. October 21st: 8 PM
Sunday. October 22nd: 2 PM

The house opens 20 minutes before curtain times. Anna Karenina Lives! is approximately 60 minutes long, and will be performed without an intermission.

Tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets at http://aklives.bpt.me/. For more information please visit Bad Quarto Productions online at http://www.BadQuarto.org. Questions may be directed to info@badquarto.org, or by phone at (646) 598-2128 between 10 AM and 6 PM.

Anna Karenina Lives! will be directed by Bad Quarto Productions' Artistic Director Tony Tambasco, who has most recently directed The Life and Death of Jack Straw, Hamlet: The First Quarto, and The Taming of a Shrew for the company.

Of Anna Karenina Lives!, Tambasco says "this play is really about what we're all going through right now. As theatre artists struggle to find ways of being more inclusive, that means interrogating what it means for a play to be canonical in 21st century America -- especially those of us that hold 'the classics' in high regard -- and it helps that Anna Karenina Lives! is such a good time about it. Germaine Shames has written the perfect musical-comedy mashup about the endurance of canonical texts, and the ways they continue to be meaningful."

About Bad Quarto Productions: Bad Quarto Productions was founded in 2010 to explore the rarely performed plays of Shakespeare's time, and the ways in which Shakespeare's staging techniques can inform modern theatrical productions. The company has produced the earliest printed version of Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of a Shrew ("a shrew" not "the shrew"); the first performance of The Merry Devil of Edmonton in the modern era; The Ballad of Dido, an original musical developed using Shakespearean techniques, and What, Lamb! What, Ladybird! a new play about Juliet's continuing relevance. Bad Quarto Productions continues to look for new ways of bridging the gap between Shakespeare's theatre and the Modern Stage.

Need more Broadway Theatre News in your life? Sign up for all the news on the Winter season, discounts & more...