Shakespeare & Company News

Rehearsals started today for the Alliance Theatre's world premiere of THE TALL GIRLS, a play set in the depression-era Midwest where the success of a girls' basketball team may be the only way to a better life for the team's members. Playwright Meg Miroshnik, winner of the 2012 Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition for her play The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, has been described by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as 'a ferocious talent with a promising career in store.'

Love and laughs are in the air at Centenary Stage Company (CSC) in this season's romantic comedy The Liar by Pierre Corneille, adapted for modern audiences by celebrated playwright David Ives and starring a vibrant cast of classical and Broadway luminaries. Running February 21st through March 9th at The Lackland Center, this story of mistaken identity and half-truths has delighted audiences and critics time and again. Scroll down for some photos of the cast!

Part of the international collaboration between The Public Theater, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Miami's GableStage, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA features Jonathan Cake as Antony and Joaquina Kalukango as Cleopatra and is directed and edited by Tarell Alvin McCraney. This Shakespearean tragedy, fresh from engagements in Stratford-upon-Avon and Miami's Colony Theatre, begins performances on February 18 and will run through March 23 in The Public's Anspacher Theater, with an official press opening on March 5. Single tickets can be purchased by calling (212) 967-7555, www.publictheater.org, or in person at the Taub Box Office at The Public Theater at 425 Lafayette Street. BroadwayWorld brings you a first look at the production below!

It's not until you enter the Margeson Theater and begin to mingle with other theatergoers and a few of the actors that you realize how much actually happens in Part I of THE LIFE & ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. With at least six open plot lines, it's about time to wrap things up, but it would not be a Charles Dickens story without being an emotional roller coaster.

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is offering amateur and semi-professional theatre groups, and schools and colleges the opportunity to put on a play by Shakespeare or his contemporaries at The Dell, the Company's open air performance space in Stratford-upon-Avon, on Saturdays and Sundays throughout summer 2014.

Following a sold out run at the Theatre Royal Bath, Sir Trevor Nunn's acclaimed production of Noel Coward's RELATIVE VALUES transfers to London's Harold Pinter Theatre for a limited season, from Wednesday 19th March to Saturday 21st June 2014, with press night on Monday 14th April.

Amphibian Stage Productions (Kathleen Culebro, Artistic Director) is thrilled to welcome Kristi Wiley as the new Director of Marketing and Development. In this role, Wiley will lead the development and execution of the strategic marketing plan, audience development initiatives and oversee the creation and implementation of a robust fundraising plan in order to raise awareness and funds for Amphibian Stage Productions.

Thinking Cap Theatre will present the Florida premiere of Mark Ravenhill's Pool (No Water), a darkly comic, brutally honest investigation of what it means to be an artist and to survive in the art world. The production will run from February 21st through March 8th at the Muse Center for the Arts in Fort Lauderdale.

A musical now playing on Broadway, a coproduction between two San Diego theaters, a musical staged with a local high school and two homegrown festivals were honored by the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Monday at its 2013 Craig Noel Awards.

On February 7, The Commercial Appeal reported that two Tennessee state senators had filed a bill that would shield individuals, businesses, and other entities from lawsuits or other sanctions for refusing services and goods to same-sex couples "if doing so would violate (their) sincerely held religious beliefs."

The Bushwick Starr will present a collaboration between stage and film director Daniel Fish and dance and theater artist Andrew Dinwiddie. Using nearly seven weeks of residency time at the Bushwick Starr, and in collaboration with actor T. Ryder Smith (War Horse, Passion Play) and designers Blanca Añon (ETERNAL, Owned) and Daniel Kluger (Nikolai and the Others, A Map of Virtue), they will create PHIL. 176 / OBIT, an episodic performance installation that draws simultaneously on the text of Shelly Kagan's renowned Yale College philosophy course, 'PHIL 176: Death,'* and on current American obituaries and death notices.

Michael Pennington, two-time Olivier Award nominee, an artist of international stature and one of England's greatest classical actors, will play the title role in William Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear directed by Arin Arbus. For the second production in Theatre for a New Audience's inaugural season at its first permanent home, the new Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place in Brooklyn, Mr. Pennington leads a company of 22 actors. King Lear begins previews March 14 for an opening March 27 and a run through May 4.

The Royal Shakespeare Company will tour Henry IV Parts I and II, Shakespeare's celebrated history plays, to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Norwich, Salford, Bradford, Bath and Canterbury between September - November 2014. The productions will take to the road after a season at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon between March - September 2014, and before playing at the Barbican in London between November 2014 - January 2015.

The Public Theater will begin performances for ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA on Tuesday, February 18 in The Public's Anspacher Theater, the culmination of the international collaboration between The Public Theater, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Miami's GableStage. ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA is directed and edited by Tarell Alvin McCraney with Joaquina Kalukango as Cleopatra and Jonathan Cake as Mark Antony. This rarely-seen Shakespearean tragedy will run through Sunday, March 23, with an official press opening on Wednesday, March 5. Single tickets can be purchased by calling (212) 967-7555, www.publictheater.org, or in person at the Taub Box Office at The Public Theater at 425 Lafayette Street.

Gulfshore Playhouse will present the hilarious-whodunit-meets-screwball comedy, Ken Ludwig's The Game's Afoot February 21st through March 16th, with a $25 preview performance on February 20th.

The Atlanta Shakespeare Company at The New American Shakespeare Tavern presents Much Ado About Nothing (in repertory), running tonight, February 8, 13, 20, 23, March 1, 7, 13, 16, 22, 28, 2014 (in repertory). Directed by J. Tony Brown.

The UK's very finest spoken word talent descends on Deptford with astonishing feats of breakneck poetry. Featuring an all-star line-up of guest artists, as well as a razor sharp Headline Poem cooked up in response to the day's news events, Classic Corner, showcasing verse of yesteryear for audiences to test their poetic knowledge, and well-loved anthems on the decks, the Albany's Chill Pill nights present an eclectic mix of original works, re-spun classics and cutting edge underground poetry.

Screen Actors Guild Foundation and Broadway World have partnered for an filmed Conversations Q&A series to recognize and celebrate the vibrant theatre community in New York City and the union actors who aspire to have a career on the stage and screen. The most recent conversation featured stage and screen titans Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, moderated by BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge. Check out Part 1 of the conversation HERE and Part 2 below!