Chesapeake Shakespeare Company Presents THE MONUMENT PROJECT

While the city of Baltimore ponders the permanent fate of 4 pedestals where once stood statues of the Confederacy, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company - one of the country's leading mid-size Shakespeare companies - has undertaken an effort to bring awareness to the need for action with THE MONUMENT PROJECT, a series of photographs that depict black actors from CSC posing in Renaissance costumes on those plinths, which have stood empty since the statues were removed in 2017.

The campaign kicks off with the unveiling of the portraits -- taken last November - of 7 actors interpreting Black Lives Matter with an assist from passages from Shakespeare's HAMLET, THE WINTER'S TALE and ROMEO AND JULIET. The photos make their debut during Black History Month on large-scale banners that will hang from the Calvert Street windows at the entrance to Chesapeake Shakespeare Company's theater building, downtown Baltimore.

Poster-size copies of the photos be available for purchase, with proceeds to benefit CSC's popular education programs, which serve 16,000 students annually in Baltimore and surrounding counties, and parts of D.C.

(The company, like most internationally, is operating with revised programming due to the coronavirus pandemic.)

Chesapeake Shakespeare Company is Maryland's leading classical theater company, founded in 2002, now with a 266-seat theater housed in an old Downtown Baltimore bank building at the corner of Calvert and Redwood. CSC presents a full season annually of first-rate, professional productions of Shakespeare plays, along with more recent classics such as OUR TOWN. Equity and inclusion in employment, education and community outreach has always been an increasing focus of the company's mission.

For more information visit: https://www.chesapeakeshakespeare.com/the-monument-project/