ANTONY & CLEOPATRA to Close Shakespeare Project of Chicago's Season With Free Shows

The Shakespeare Project of Chicago will wrap up its 2025-26 Theatrical Reading Season with free performances of William Shakespeare's tragedy ANTONY & CLEOPATRA, running June 13, 14, 19, 20 and 22 at various Chicago-area venues.

Shakespeare's ANTONY & CLEOPATRA moves across continents and crashes through borders - Egyptian palaces, Roman battlefields, warships at sea. It's a play that refuses to stay small. At its center: two figures too large for any single world, speaking some of the most extravagant and heartbreaking verse Shakespeare ever wrote. Power shifts. Alliances crack. And the language keeps rising - sensuous, brutal, lyrical, and desperate, often in the same speech. This isn't a quiet tragedy. It's an epic that earns the word.

Directed by J.R. Sullivan, the cast includes Zach Bloomfield as Thidias, Proculeius and Guard; Ryan Wright Cassidy as Octavius Caesar; Jonathan Gillard Daly as Enobarbus; Nic Eastlund as Lepidus, Soldier and Watch; Shelby Marie Edwards as Charmian; Olivia Fergus-Brummer as Octavia and Dolabella; Joe Fernandez as Scaros and Demetrius; Peter Garino as Agrippa; Benjamin Jouras as Soothsayer, Menas and Soldier; Philip J. Macaluso as Messenger and Soldier; Eamon McInerney as Philo, Messenger, Countryman, Soldier and Sentry; Tom Morin as Euphronius, Alexas and Diomedes; Abigail Rose Nakken as Iras; Nick Sandys as Antony; Rebecca Swislow as Cleopatra; Dylan C. Wack as Maecenas and Guard; and Jake Weinheimer as Pompey and Dercetus. Isa Guitian and William Ryder are the understudies.

The production features music and sound design by George Zahora. Christopher Prentice is the stage manager and Kyle A. Thomas is the dramaturg.

The Shakespeare Project of Chicago's theatrical readings are fully staged book-in-hand performances. Admission is free and seating is limited.

For more information, visit shakespeareprojectchicago.org.