The Reading Room Festival at Folger Shakespeare Library

The Reading Room Festival returns for its third year, sharing staged readings, panel discussions, workshops, and community celebrations. This festival unites artists, critics, and scholars in a celebration of creative community, as they collaboratively explore the multifaceted nature of Shakespeare’s stories. Playwrights and adaptors of Shakespeare’s works include Barry Edelstein, Emily Lyon, Reynaldo Piniella, and Whitney White.

THE PLAYS:

STAGED READINGS

HENRY 6 
by William Shakespeare
Adapted and directed by Barry Edelstein
Presentation: Thursday, January 30, 7:30pm

Artistic Director Barry Edelstein shares selections and commentary on The Old Globe’s process of creating Henry 6, which turns the rarely produced Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III into a thrilling two-part event. Two ruling families of England, the Yorks and the Lancasters, fight each other in a high-stakes civil war for power known as the Wars of the Roses. These adaptations include everything people love about the Bard—ingenious language, vibrant characters, breathtaking battles, and sweeping crowd scenes—as they explore the impact of national politics on individual lives. This will be followed by a post-show conversation with the creative team who will discuss their process of inviting communities into the process of adapting and performing Henry 6.

VALOR, AGRAVIO Y MUJER (The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs) 
by Ana Caro Mallén de Soto
Presented in association with Expand the Canon
Reading: Friday, January 31, 8pm

This play is a celebration of women’s agency, written by Shakespeare’s Spanish contemporary Ana Caro Mallén de Soto. Following a scorned heroine determined to carry out a revenge tragedy-turned-comedy, this play includes hallmarks familiar to Shakespeare’s writing, including cross dressing, love triangles, swordplay, and soaring verse. Doña Leonora dresses like a man and crosses Europe to get revenge on her ungrateful ex who left her unmarriageable. Along the way, she manipulates others in her sphere causing confusion and antics – and ends up with a triumph that she deems better than any murder.  

Expand the Canon researches and celebrates classic plays by historic women and gender-expansive writers—and is a call to action to produce them. They’ve partnered with and inspired more than 20 companies across the country to teach and perform these works. Find all 52 curated plays (spanning 1600-1990, 16 countries, and 11 languages) at expandthecanon.com. 

BY THE QUEEN 
by Whitney White 
Reading: Saturday, February 1, 8pm

From her roots as a provincial princess of France, to her ascension to the throne of England and her eventual downfall, Queen Margaret is one of the most complicated, fascinating, and thrilling characters in Shakespeare’s works. She is a warrior, a wife, a politician, a mother… and this dynamic new drama, lifted and remixed from the text of Henry VI and Richard III, finally gives her story the telling it deserves. 

HAMLET
by William Shakespeare
Adapted by Reynaldo Piniella and Emily Lyon
Spanish translation by Christin Eve Cato
Additional Anishinaabe translations by Ty Defoe
Reading: Sunday, February 2, 4pm

Hamlet is a Black, Latinx prince in this bilingual reimagining of Shakespeare’s tragedy, with text infused by the Spanish spoken in present-day New York City.