THE SHAKESPEARE CONSPIRACY Begins Previews At Theater Row, 4/20

Fledgling Theatre Company, under the Artistic Direction of Matthew Dalton Lynch has announced dates for the New York Premiere of Ted Bacino and Rufus Cadigan's THE SHAKESPEARE CONSPIRACY, a new play (based on Mr. Bacino's book of the same title) that explores the greatest literary deception of all time. The production is directed by Jeremy Karafin and will run April 20th - May 5th in the Studio Theatre at Theatre Row (410 West 42nd Street). The official opening will be on Tuesday, April 27 at 7:30PM. It will run as part of the first annual BATTLE OF THE BARDS: THE Christopher Marlowe FESTIVAL, a new six week festival that features two original plays about William Shakespeare & Christopher Marlowe and chronicles the life that Marlowe would have lived as a fugitive, hiding not only his gay sexuality, but also his identity as the actual author of Shakespeare's works.

Murder, Mayhemand manhunts in the underbelly of gay London theater as the Black Plague scourges the country in this telling of the conspiracy surrounding the true authorship of the works of the bard. THE SHAKESPEARE CONSPIRACY is based on the real people of Christopher Marlowe's life and supposed murder.

Two recent discoveries, one in England and one in America, have finally determined the real author of the works of Shakespeare. Both discoveries coincided with the 400th anniversary of the death of the actor from Stratford who for centuries has been credited with writing the plays and poems. These announcements have fanned the flames of the daily stories resurrecting the usual authorship candidates - Marlowe, Bacon, the Earl of Oxford and even the actor Shakespeare himself.

In 2016, the "New Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare" (one of the most authoritative scholarly resources concerning Shakespeare's writings) listed Christopher Marlow as the co-author of some of the plays, including "Henry VI, (Parts One, Two and Three.") An esteemed team of 23 scholars from five countries completed the research on this. According to the London Guardian, these three plays are among the 17 or more that are now believed to be written by someone other than Shakespeare. The New York Times wrote "This is the first time another author has been listed on the title page of any of Shakespeare's works."

"Fourteen ofthe Bard's plays were all written after 1616, the year Shakespeare, the actor from Stratford, died. According to a character in Bacino's novel, "Some playwrights don't write that many plays in a whole lifetime and certainly not after they've died."

Also, using plagiarism software, researchers recently found almost a hundred identical or very similar lines in the writings of Marlowe and Shakespeare. Did one person write both?

The cast of THE SHAKESPEARE CONSPIRACY features Matthew Dalton Lynch, Mateo d'Amato, Jevon Nicholson, James M. Arthur, and Mario C. Brown.

The full production team will soon be announced.

THE SHAKESPEARE CONSPIRACY will play April 20th, 21st, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, May 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th at 7:30 and April 22nd, 29th at 2pm. The running time is 120 min.

Tickets are $20 and available from Telecharge at https://www.telecharge.com/Off-Broadway/The-Shakepeare-Conspiracy/Overview , or by calling 212-239-6200, or at the Theater Row Box Office prior to each performance.

Author Ted Bacino has worked as a reporter on a daily newspaper, as a high school and college educator and as a director of stage musicals. He has a BA and MS from Northern Illinois University anda SMG from Harvard. Mr. Bacino, who has three children and eight grandchildren, divides his time between Venice, Italy; Paris, France; and Palm Springs, California. In 2005 he received a Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Fame for directing theater.

Dr. Rufus Cadigan has written many plays, including "Might Have Gone Fishing," for which he received the "Excellence in Playwriting Award" at the Edward Albee Last Frontier Conference. The play was also a finalist for the New Century Writer Awards in 2001. Though he and Ted Bacino had lived in the same city, they had never met until Rufus Cadigan was lent a copy of Bacino's novel and suggest they co-write a stage version. Their play has had successful productions in Columbus, Fort Lauderdaleand Rockford University.

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