Aaron Posner's DISTRICT MERCHANTS, Holly Twyford & Erin Weaver in 'MIDSUMMER' and More Set for Folger Theatre's 2015-16 Season

Folger Theatre Artistic Producer Janet Alexander Griffin today announced the 2015/16 season. As the Folger embarks on a historic 2016 season commemorating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death with insightful exhibitions, lectures, and concerts, Folger Theatre will stage a full season of works by and newly adapted from the world's most esteemed playwright.

Folger Theatre begins its season with an exciting new collaboration with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in November, with Shakespeare's harrowing adventure tale Pericles. This innovative production, currently on stage at OSF, is directed by Joseph Haj, who directed Folger Theatre's Hamlet in 2010, which garnered the Helen Hayes Award for "Outstanding Resident Play." In January 2016, Aaron Posner will direct Shakespeare's romantic classic A Midsummer Night's Dream. This dynamic, modern­ -- and musical staging in Shakespeare's enchanting and wondrous forest -- will star DC favorites Holly Twyford and Erin Weaver. The season concludes with the world premiere of District Merchants, a new play written by Aaron Posner, commissioned by Folger Theatre, and based on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

In addition this 3-play season, Folger Theatre will present as a season opener the world premiere of texts&beheadings/ElizabethR in September. As part of The Women's Voices Theater Festival, dedicated to featuring new works by female playwrights, this limited engagement uses Queen Elizabeth's I's own words to explore the nature of royalty. In April 2016, the riotously innovative Reduced Shakespeare Company® returns to Folger Theatre for the east coast premiere of William Shakespeare's Long Lost First Play (abridged), written and directed by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor.

As part of the Library's The Wonder of Will: 400 Years of Shakespeare, Folger Theatre will expand programming that accompanies each production. Folger Fridays will feature 6:30pm curtain-raisers, talks, and performances. Other special nights for patrons include Pre-Show Seminars with Folger Director Michael Witmore, Post-Show Discussions with the cast, Brews & Banter with select cast members, and Folger's longstanding and popular College Night, Student Matinees, and Pay-What-You-Can performances.

New this season, Folger Theatre will offer a pre-show Director's Talk Series -- where patrons can hear about the creative process, staging, and vision of the production from the play's director -- and a Curator Talk Series, where curators speak about the exhibitions presented in the Folger's Great Hall.

A traveling tour of the original 1623 First Folio will take place in 2016, where one of the world's most treasured books will stop in every state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Premiering with the First Folio tour will be Gravedigger's Tale, an interactive play based on Shakespeare's Hamlet. Developed by director Robert Richmond (Richard III and Henry V at Folger Theatre), the Gravedigger, who appears to have much more knowledge about court life in Elsinore than originally thought, arrives with a trunk and a book and responds to questions from the audience using the text from Hamlet. This special touring production features Helen Hayes Award-winner Louis Butelli as the storied Gravedigger.

Folger Theatre will once again collaborate with Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for three performances of Romeo and Juliet, October 16-18, 2015. Prokofiev's sumptuous ballet music underscores the struggles of young love amidst violent tragedy in this new concert adaptation of Shakespeare's timeless love story. This marks the second production that Folger Theatre has partnered with BSO, following 2014's triumphant A Midsummer Night's Dream. Edward Berkeley will once again direct and adapt an esteemed ensemble of actors with orchestra.

Subscriptions to Folger's 2015/16 season go on sale May 11. Visit www.folger.edu/theatre for more information, or call the Folger Box Office at 202.544.7077.

---

FOLGER THEATRE'S 2015/16 SEASON:

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival production of

PERICLES

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Joseph Haj

November 13 - December 20, 2015

Pericles, Prince of Tyre, sets sail on an extraordinary journey through the decades and is blown from the coasts of Phoenicia to Greece and to Turkey. Chased by the wicked King of Antioch, Pericles finds his true love in Thaisa and loses her and their daughter Marina on the rough seas.

Directed by Joseph Haj (Hamlet at Folger Theatre, 2010) who was recently named Artistic Director of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, the production stars Wayne T. Carr, who won praise as Caliban in OSF's The Tempest last season, and effectively incorporates striking visual projections and live music composed by Tony Award-winner Jack Herrick to stage a Pericles that has been hailed as "breathtaking entertainment" (Mail Tribune).

This production of PERICLES was originally produced at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Bill Rauch, Artistic Director, Cynthia Rider, Executive Director

A Midsummer Night's Dream

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Aaron Posner

January 26 - March 6, 2016

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" It is easy to lose yourself in the enchanted woods of Shakespeare's timeless romantic tale. This magical comedy of tangled lovers, mischievous fairies -- and a band of players to boot -- is given a fresh, new staging by Aaron Posner, with DC favorites Holly Twyford as

Bottom and Erin Weaver as Puck. This captivating A Midsummer Night's Dream is a musical celebration of the follies and foibles of human beings -- and not to be missed.

WORLD PREMIERE

District Merchants

By Aaron Posner

A retelling of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

Directed by Michael John Garcés

May 31 - July 3, 2016

Love and litigation, deep passions and predatory lending taken to a whole new level... this uneasy comedy wades fearlessly into the endless complexities and contradictions of life in America. Set largely among the black and Jewish populations of an imaginary version of The District that lives simultaneously Shakespeare's day, post-civil war America, and today, DISTRICT MERCHANTS is populated with a deeply passionate, endlessly flawed array of uncompromising fathers, irreverent daughters, would-be lovers, and saucy, surprising servants.

Part of the Women's Voices Theater Festival

texts&beheadings/Elizabeth R

Created and directed by Karin Coonrod

Produced by Compagnia de' Colombari

Limited Engagement - 16 Performances

September 19 - October 4, 2015

texts&beheadings/ElizabethR is a new American play that explores the life and language of England's greatest queen. Created and directed by Karin Coonrod and drawing on the Folger collection of Elizabeth I's letters, the play uses Elizabeth's own words to reveal her wit, courage, and extraordinary love of her people. Multi-lingual and insatiably curious, Elizabeth survived disinheritance, excommunication, and imprisonment to emerge triumphant. Four actresses portray the resilient queen and allow us to marvel at her theatrical brilliance. Through poems, prayers, and private letters, the woman who swore that she would not make windows into men's souls reveals her own.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company's

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S LONG LOST FIRST PLAY (abridged)

Written and directed by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor

Limited Engagement - 21 Performances

April 21 - May 8, 2016

The wonderfully inventive and wildly hilarious Reduced Shakespeare Company returns to Folger Theatre in this eagerly anticipated east coast premiere. Discovered in a treasure-filled parking lot in Leicester, England, an ancient manuscript proves to be the long-lost first play by none other than the young William Shakespeare from Stratford. Using questionable scholarship and street-performer smarts, the trio of comic actors throw themselves into a fast, funny, and frenzied festival of physical finesse, witty wordplay, and plentiful (pitiful) punning. William Shakespeare's Long Lost First Play (abridged) is written and directed by two of the world's most famous Shakespearean comedians, Austin Tichenor and Reed Martin, stars of the PBS film The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), and authors of The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) (Helen Hayes Award nominee for Best New Play), and the definitive irreverent reference book Reduced Shakespeare: The Complete Guide for the Attention-Impaired (abridged) (published by Hyperion).

---

Tickets/Information: www.folger.edu/theatre or 202.544.7077. Subscriptions begin at $105. Individual tickets are $35-$75, with discounts offered to students, seniors, educators, military, and groups of ten or more. Performances are held at Folger Theatre, located at 201 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003. The nearest metro stations are Capitol South (blue/orange lines, 4 blocks) and Union Station (red line, 7 blocks). Street parking is available in the surrounding Capitol Hill neighborhood.

About Folger Theatre and Folger Shakespeare Library: Folger Theatre is the centerpiece of Folger Shakespeare Library's programs for the public and is recognized for dynamic performances in the 250-seat Elizabethan-styled theatre, specializing in innovative stagings of works by Shakespeare, other classical work, and new plays inspired by these traditions. Since 1991, Folger Theatre has been honored by the Helen Hayes Awards with 23 awards and 135 nominations for excellence in acting, direction, design, and production-including the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Resident Play in 2011 for Hamlet (a year in which all three of Folger's theatrical productions were nominated in that category) and in 2013 for The Taming of the Shrew. In 2012, Folger Theatre brought from London Shakespeare's Globe's Hamlet for the company's first Washington appearance and continued their collaboration last season with the World-to-World two-year global tour of Hamlet, as well as their on tour production of King Lear featuring Joseph Marcell. Janet Alexander Griffin is the Artistic Producer of Folger Theatre and Director of Public Programs which includes the Folger's music and literary series.

Folger Shakespeare Library is a renowned center for scholarship, learning, culture, and the arts. Home to the world's largest Shakespeare collection and a primary repository for research material from the early modern period (1500-1750), Folger Shakespeare Library is an internationally recognized research library offering advanced scholarly programs in the humanities; a national leader in how Shakespeare is taught in grades K-12; and an award-winning producer of cultural and arts programs -- theatre, music, poetry, exhibits, lectures, and family programs. A gift to the American people from industrialist Henry Clay Folger, Folger Shakespeare Library -- located one block east of the U.S. Capitol -- opened in 1932 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Learn more at www.folger.edu.