LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST, Norm Lewis and More Set for Tennessee Shakespeare Co.'s 19th Season
Norm Lewis will headline a children's literacy gala as the company launches a new classical play festival.
Tennessee Shakespeare Company has revealed its 19th performance season of “firsts” in Memphis featuring its 10th Annual Free Shout-Out Shakespeare Series that includes its first production ever of Love’s Labor’s Lost throughout west Tennessee in the fall, the world premiere of its first 1950s cabaret in December titled A Swingin’ Christmas Cabaret, its first production of the play version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Broadway legend Norm Lewis’ first performance in Memphis for the Broadway Gala for Children’s Literacy, and the launch of the country’s first American Page to American Stage New Classical Play Festival featuring adaptations of works by Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, Kate Chopin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Walt Whitman, and Richard Wright.
In addition to its free performances in its popular outdoor Shout-Out Series, TSC again will offer Free Will Kids’ Nights for every Friday night performance on its Tabor Stage. This offer provides free admission to up to four children 17 years and younger when they are accompanied by at least one paying adult guardian.
Committed to classical arts innovation in the United States, TSC remains the State’s only permanently-based, professional, classical theatre. TSC and Founder/Producing Artistic Director Dan McCleary remain committed to artistic excellence, teaching innovation, and social betterment through the plays of William Shakespeare and classical writers.
TSC will host its free Performance Season Preview Party on Tuesday, September 29 from 5:30-7:00 pm on its Tabor Stage. Beginning with light food and drinks, the evening will showcase excerpts from each of the season’s shows, announce an update to the season’s signature matching grant campaign, introduce its new Board members, and launch its first “fun-raising” group, Folio of Friends, chaired by TSC Vice President/Memphis Grizzlies TV announcer Pete Pranica with vice chair Gay Daughdrill Boyd. TSC this season returns its fourth annual Classical Theatre Apprentice Program for early-career professionals from around the country as they continue their classical training with TSC’s professional teachers, actors, and stage managers for seven months while in residency in Memphis. Graduates of each of the previous three cohorts will perform on TSC’s stage this season, while almost all other graduates are working or continuing their training in the profession around the U.S.
The 2026-27 Performance Season
10th Annual Free Shout-Out Shakespeare Series: Love’s Labor’s Lost
the pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare
directed by Stephanie Shine
run-time: 90 minutes without intermission
September 25 – October 18
on outdoor stages throughout west Tennessee, and indoors (paid) at TSC
The French king and a select few men have moved their court to the garden park of Navarre, where they swear to create “a little academe” that will study for three years while swearing off women: “still and contemplative in living art.” But when the Princess of France and her ladies appear, all oaths are off. With a play-title like this, is it possible nuptials will ensue? The colorful denizens of the woods hope to help!
Bartlett Performing Arts Center (lakeside)
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 at 7:00 pm
Collierville Town Square’s Train Depot
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 at 7:00 pm
TSC’s Tabor Stage (paid)
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27 at 3:00 pm
TSC’s Tabor Stage (paid)
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2 at 7:00 pm
Elmwood Cemetery (paid; through Elmwood)
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3 at 6:00 pm
Dixon Gallery and Gardens
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4 at 3:00 pm
Wiseacre Brewery, 2783 Broad Avenue
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8 at 7:00 pm
St. George’s Church, 2425 S. Germantown Rd.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9 at 7:00 pm
Raleigh Library, 3452 Austin Peay Hwy. (lakeside)
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10 at 3:00 pm
Overton Park Shell
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 11 at 5:00 pm
Overton Square’s Chimes Sq. Amphitheatre
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16 at 7:00 pm
Reverie, 23660 TN-HWY 57, LaGrange
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 at 5:00 pm
Davies Manor, 3570 Davieshire Drive, Bartlett
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18 at 4:00 pm
A Swingin’ Christmas Cabaret
created and directed by Dan McCleary
on the Tabor Stage
run-time: approximately one hour without intermission
December 4-20
Fridays-Saturdays at 7:30 pm/Sundays at 4:00 pm/Preview is December 4
Things really get swingin’ this holiday season when Bingo pays Frankie a visit one 1950s snowy Christmas Eve. After an exchange of musical gifts and wassail around the tinsel-strewn tree, the snappy twosome takes a merry journey back in musical time – way back, brother! Featuring guest star vocalists (from multiple centuries) and many of your favorite carols and radio hits, this cool yule of a cabaret will jazz up any family or office celebration. Bistro-table seating available for you and your cocktails. Featuring the return of some of our Taming of the Shrew stars!
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
adapted for the stage by Simon Levy
directed by Stephanie Shine
on the Tabor Stage
run-time: approximately 2 hours 20 minutes, including intermission
January 29 – February 14, 2027
Fridays-Saturdays at 7:30 pm/Sundays at 3:00 pm/Preview is January 29
The young American Dream comes into poetic perspective in this celebrated play-adaptation of Fitzgerald’s classic 1925 novel. Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby, and Daisy Buchanan play out a glitzy fable – of America, of the Jazz Age, of enchantment and illusions, of a world where love and dreams are pursued and betrayed.
Presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Dramatists Play Service: www.concordtheatricals.com
American Page to American Stage: New, Classical Play Festival
curated by Dan McCleary
on the Tabor Stage
Readings/Staged Readings run-times: 60-90 minutes, including any intermission, followed by a discussion with the adapters
March 12-13 and March 19-20, 2027
Memphis becomes the first artistic launch city for a new play festival that will annually curate classical American literature for stage adaptation to plays. This inaugural year features six readings/staged readings in early development and a rare opportunity for you to see how plays are created, to provide feedback, and then track their progress to professional stage maturity.
Friday, March 12 at 7:30 pm: richard WRITE!
adapted from Richard Wright’s Black Boy and performed by Darius Wallace
In Wright’s 1945 autobiography, a man born burning with the wish to become someone worthy struggles to survive the Jim Crow South. He tries every cure the world offers for the disease of being himself, discovering along the way that his rare gift was always the burning love of words. Wright’s American story from Natchez to Chicago offers an authentic voice still refusing to be silenced.
Saturday, March 13 at 4:00 pm: The Old Man and the Sea
by Ernest Hemingway, newly adapted by Tim Hotchner
based on the stage adaptation by A.E. Hotchner and Tim Hotchner
Santiago has come home beaten, with a skeleton lashed to his skiff. He conjures the sea from memory, the boy nearby acting as love and longing on both sides of the voyage. And underneath: a great writer’s reckoning with endurance, loss, and the fear of being finished. Hemingway asked trusted friend A.E. Hotchner to adapt his story to the stage. He did so very late in life, with his son Tim, who now re-imagines the epic for one man in one room on one night.
Saturday, March 13 at 7:30 pm: The Yellow Wallpaper
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, adapted by Nena Martins
Gilman’s 1892 Gothic horror short story is regarded as a landmark of feminist literature. Her narrator is placed on a “rest cure” for a “nervous depression,” following the birth of her child. She is forbidden to write. But write she does, in journal entries of precision and imagination that both animate her room into a fever and explore misogyny within the medical field that still begs for revisiting.
Friday, March 19 at 7:30 pm: The Awakening
by Kate Chopin, adapted by Paula Cizmar
In 1899, two decades before women could vote, Chopin wrote a visionary and scandalous novel that challenged the way women think of their lives, bodies, and connection to nature. Set in a prim and proper age, Edna Pontellier casts off the role of obedient wife and mother in New Orleans as she allows the sensuousness of the Gulf Coast sea, sky, and sultry breeze to work their magic.
Saturday, March 20 at 4:00 pm: Flame: Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay
adapted by Gay H. Hammond
Weaving the verse, prose, and imagination of the 1923 Pulitzer-winning Millay, this piece offers a compelling dreamscape of wonder and yearning. In concert with iconic imagery, the poet’s words embody both our inner and outer worlds with lyricism and a biting wit.
Saturday, March 20 at 7:30 pm: Moby-Dick and Song of Myself
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
and
Song of Myself by Walt Whitman
adapted and performed by Dan McCleary
In the literary family tree, there is Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, then arguably Melville and Whitman. Born the same year (1819) and dying within months of each other, the two American sensualists create and question their American God in prose and poems, from land and sea, in obscurity and in fame. Here, their ineffable tomes are twinned in poetic kinship and cosmic brevity.
Note: Titles/personnel/schedule subject to change, with notice.
Broadway Gala for Children’s Literacy: Starring Norm Lewis
on the Tabor Stage
Saturday, April 10, 2027
6:00-9:00 pm
Our annual blow-out party features open bars, signature cocktails, fun silent and live auctions, a chance to win a weekend trip for two to Manhattan, and a Broadway giant performing on stage before joining you for dessert.
Norm Lewis is the multi-decade star of Phantom of the Opera, Le Miz, Sweeney Todd, Porgy and Bess, Little Mermaid, Jesus Christ Superstar, Chess, Show Boat, La Cage, Miss Saigon, Pippin, Chicago, Sideshow, and The Tempest (Prospero). And all proceeds go to our Education and Outreach Program.
EDUCATION AND OUTREACH PROGRAMS
Funded in part by Tennessee Arts Commission, ARTSmemphis, National Endowment for the Arts, Independent Bank, AutoZone, First Horizon Foundation, Arts Midwest, Mid-America Arts Alliance, TSC’s Barbara B. Apperson Angel Fund, and TSC’s Jack Jones Children’s Literacy Fund.
The Romeo and Juliet Project
The only program of its kind in the nation, in which TSC’s resident teacher-artists rehearse 9th-graders into an appreciation that violence is not the answer to life’s complexities.
The Macbeth Initiative
This singular program for 12th-graders uses the great tragedy to explore personal ethical issues such as ambition and power.
Juvenile Justice Program
Inspiring adolescents’ life-changes upon release from detainment through Shakespeare and our Poetic Justice Summer Camp. One of the few such programs in the nation.
Feast of Crispian-South
TSC is the only theatre in the nation with a program joined officially with the V.A. Medical Center to prepare our heroes in the PTSD and chemical dependency wards to re-enter the world with health and all they deserve.
Summer Shakespeare Camps and Adult Theatre Classes
Elementary/Middle/High School Playshops and Residencies
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Speak, Salvation, Speak Hattiloo Theatre (8/13-9/06) |
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Titanic Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Memphis (4/22-4/25) |
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Continuum: A Faculty and Guest Artist Choreographed Dance Concert Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Memphis (11/20-11/22) |
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Leanne Morgan Thompson Boling Arena (12/12-12/12) |
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A Revolution of Her Own!™ Deborah Sampson Poems Park (9/19-9/19) |
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Dracula, A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Memphis (2/18-2/21) |
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Leanne Morgan McKenzie Arena (10/24-10/24) |
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It's Raining Queens™ Orpheum Theatre Group (10/02-10/02) |
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CLUE Orpheum Theatre (9/15-9/20) |
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Rigoletto The Cannon Center for the Performing Arts (10/24-10/24) |