Baltimore Shakespeare Factory to Present THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

Baltimore Shakespeare Factory (BSF), in conjunction with British original pronunciation (OP) experts, the father and son team of David and Ben Crystal, will open its 2015 season with a historic production of The Merchant of Venice. Ben Crystal will also visit the company twice during the rehearsal process, including the final rehearsals during the week before opening night. Presenting A Merchant of Venice in OP fits perfectly with BSF's overall philosophy of recreating the staging conditions that existed in Shakespeare's day.

About a dozen Shakespeare plays have been performed in OP since Romeo and Juliet was produced in 2004 at Shakespeare's Globe in London. BSF's presentation will be the very first time in 400 years that modern audiences will be able to hear The Merchant of Venice spoken in the accent heard in Shakespeare's time - and the first time an OP production has been presented in the Mid-Atlantic area. The play opens March 27 and runs through April 25. There will be one performance on May 8 at Boordy Vineyards.

This tale features Shylock's relentless pursuit of a pound of flesh from the merchant Antonio and the famous contest of the caskets where suitors compete for the hand of the beautiful Portia. Though written four centuries ago, the play offers keen insight into themes that are painfully applicable to the modern world.

Shakespeare on Toast - Getting a Taste for the Bard (Icon 2008) was shortlisted for the 2010 Educational Writer of the Year Award. His new quartet, a series for Arden Shakespeare/Bloomsbury - Springboard Shakespeare was published in June 2013.

You Say Potato (Macmillan 2014) and An Illustrated Dictionary of Shakespeare for OUP (April 2015) were both co-written with his father. Ben is also a narrator for RNIB Books, Channel 4, and the BBC.
Ben has worked in TV, film, and theatre, including roles in Titus Andronicus and The Comedy of Errors at the reconstructed Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. His theatre productions of Simon Stephens' One Minute in 2008 and Robin French's Gilbert is Dead in 2009 were critically acclaimed, and in 2011 he played Hamlet in the first Original Pronunciation production of the play for 400 years, co-producing with the Nevada Repertory Company. Other Shakespeare theatrical credits include Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Edgar in King Lear.

In 2012 he was the curator, producer and creative director of the first CD of extracts of Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation for the British Library, their best-selling CD to date. He gives workshops on performing Shakespeare around the world, and some of this work can be viewed at www.passioninpractice.com

Ben's Shakespeare Ensemble took its OP production of Pericles to Daniel Harding's Festival Interplay in January, and, after a sell-out series of events at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare's Globe in July 2014, will be returning there in 2015.

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