Shakespeare Theatre Company

Broadway’s Michael Urie To Return to Shakespeare Theatre Company for Free For All Hamlet

Free For All, one of the capital’s cherished annual traditions, will return for its 29th annual summer to Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC), offering two weeks of free performances of the Company’s...

Staging an Epic: A Four-Part Documentary Series from Shakespeare Theatre Company

After 33 years as Artistic Director, Michael Kahn has directed nearly all the world’s greatest classical plays, worked with some of the biggest actors in the world and built the Shakespeare Theatre...

Review: ‘The Oresteia’ by Shakespeare Theatre Company

To theater historians, dramaturgs, and lovers of all things Greek, the promise of a production of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia is enough to drive one mad with joy. To begin with, of all the Greek plays...

‘The Oresteia’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company: Not Your Typical Chorus Line (Interview)

The Oresteia, freely adapted by Ellen McLaughlin from Aeschylus (c. 525 BCE-c. 456 BCE) promises to be a fitting conclusion to Michael Kahn’s last season as Artistic Director of the Shakespeare...

‘Love’s Labor’s Lost’ Director Vivienne Benesch Finds Inspiration in Folger Reading Room

Actor, director, and administrator Vivienne Benesch has many credits to her name. She is the Producing Artistic Director of the PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. For twelve...

Behind the Scenes at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Props Warehouse

Staging an epic that involves a bloody chain of events in “a deluge of violence,” as the Shakespeare Theatre Company describes The Oresteia, requires not just the skills and talents of the actors on...

Michael Kahn & Friends Off the Record: The Folger Years: A Celebration in Pictures

“I think you have to define who you are–and that definition can change–but you have to be as uncompromising as you possibly can about who you think you are, and to fight for that, in bad times and...

“The Puppets Help Tell the Story”: World Puppetry Day Interview with ‘Vanity Fair’ Creative Team

In honor of World Puppetry Day celebrated on March 21st, it was time to learn more about the puppetry used in the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Vanity Fair, now...

Review: ‘Vanity Fair’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

“I think I could be a good woman if I had five thousand a year.” –Becky Sharp William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) is considered a great writer. Vanity Fair, despite its flaws, is his finest novel....

Shakespeare Theatre Company Announces ‘Michael Kahn and Friends: Off the Record’

Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Artistic Director Michael Kahn invites theatre-lovers to a series of intimate conversations about life in the D.C. theatre scene as he prepares to retire from the STC...

Dangereuse: The Women of Shakespeare Theatre Company’s ‘Richard the Third’

An embittered wife. A “painted queen.” A virago who curses all who have crossed her. At first glance, the women of Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Richard the Third would not seem to be particularly...

In the Moment: Reflections on ‘Nell Gwynn’ at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre

Beyond cracker-jack, comic allure, the Folger production of Jessica Swale’s Nell Gwynn is a class act. The Robert Richmond-directed production is built upon Swale’s clever, fresh script. Nell Gwynn is...

Review: ‘Richard the Third’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Did ever a villain so enjoy his murderously evil ways as Shakespeare’s Richard III? In the Shakespeare Theatre’s production, Matthew Rauch’s Richard teaches a master class in duplicity and...

News: Simon Godwin Announces His Debut Season for Shakespeare Theatre Company

Incoming Artistic Director Simon Godwin today announces Shakespeare Theatre Company’s 2019-2020 Season. Godwin’s debut season highlights his artistic aspirations for the company to create “high...

Review: ‘Nell Gwynn’ at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre

Nell Gwynn (1650-1687) was not only one of the most talented actresses in Restoration Theatre, but also one of the most beloved. That was because “pretty, witty” Nell, as diarist Samuel Pepys called...

In the Moment: Impressions on STC’s ‘Richard the Third’

Complex villains are irresistible on stage and screen. They can be so magnetic. Their restlessness and shadings of evil keep my brain’s neurons firing. I have always thought of the fictional King...

Review: ‘The Screwtape Letters’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre

When the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” comes on the pre-show soundtrack, it’s a tipoff that C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters is going to be a diabolically delightful evening of theater and...

Shakespeare Theatre Company Hosts Annual Mock Trial

On January 14, 2019, the Shakespeare Theatre Company presented its Winter Mock Trial at Sidney Harman Hall (610 F Street NW). Guests were invited to hear Richard the Third: A Good Name Restored – Was...

Review: ‘The Panties, The Partner and The Profit’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Just in time for an escape from too many holiday-spiked eggnog toasts, Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) provides an appealing, sugar-coated farce to indulge audiences. It will especially ring with...

Magic Time!: On Acting with a Conscience: A Q&A with Lianne Harvey, now appearing in ‘An Inspector Calls’

The character Lianne Harvey plays in J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, Sheila Birling, really fascinated me. Sheila stands out as no ordinary ingenue. During the course of the play, Sheila goes...

Review: ‘An Inspector Calls’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls, as directed by Stephen Daldry, represents the best of international theatre. The play combines the chocolate-box delights of an Agatha Christie mystery with deeper...

Magic Time!: ‘An Inspector Calls’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

J. B. Priestley’s classic An Inspector Calls—a drawing-room drama set in England in 1912 and written there in 1944—has landed in DC with uncanny currency. Now at Sidney Harman Hall in a touring...

Talking Shakespeare with Ted van Griethuysen at the Shakespeare Theatre Company

How do you interview a legend? This was the question I pondered on the way to the Lansburgh Theatre to interview Ted van Griethuysen, one of the finest actors of his generation. Shakespearean par...

Jiehae Park’s ‘Peerless’ Reimagines ‘Macbeth’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s ReDiscovery Reading Series

There was a significant “first” at the Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) 2018-19 ReDiscovery Reading Series at the Lansburgh Theatre this week. It was a reading of the enthralling, fearless Peerless,...

Interview: Composer and Lyricist Michael Dansicker on ‘The Comedy of Errors’

With the addition of original music from composer/lyricist Michael Dansicker, Shakespeare Theatre Company’s (STC) The Comedy of Errors is abandonment into farce. Whatever may be outside the walls of...

Review: ‘The Comedy of Errors’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare’s earliest and most popular works, so there is little point recounting the plot. One must only remember that it is the one with two sets of twins: one a pair...

Review: ‘Macbeth’ at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre

In January 1666, famed diarist Samuel Pepys saw a performance of the William Davenant Macbeth and called it a “strange perfection.” The production that just opened at the Folger Theatre is strangely...

Shakespeare Theatre Company Announces New Artistic Director: Simon Godwin

The Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) today announces the appointment of Simon Godwin as its next Artistic Director. Godwin, currently the Associate Director at the National Theatre of Great Britain...

Dangereuse: The “Wow” Effect: Free-for-All ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at the Shakespeare Theatre Company

First-rate Shakespeare for free is one of the most valuable gifts the Shakespeare Theatre offers the DC community. The two-week run of Romeo and Juliet is a reprise of director Alan Paul’s acclaimed...

Review: ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Free For All

Romeo & Juliet’s famous entreaty–“wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast”– is strikingly realized in the latest addition to Shakespeare Theatre Company’s yearly Free For All production, a...

Party On! ‘Will on the Hill’ at the Shakespeare Theatre Company

Romeo and Juliet, Beatrice and Benedick, and even (don’t say it) Macbeth were on hand for a Shakespearean love fest on Monday night, all to benefit the wonderful education programs the Shakespeare...

Review: ‘Camelot’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Last month marked the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech. As threats to his life mounted, King seemed resigned to his fate. “I’m not concerned about...

In The Moment: ‘An Iliad’ Brings Homer to Millennial Audiences at the Atlas (Interviews)

It has been a muscular classic read for centuries. It has withstood the test of time, at least up to now. But in these contemporary days, does Homer’s Iliad resonate, or has it lost its timeless...

In the Moment: Interview with Shakespeare Theatre Company Wig Master Dori Beau Seigneur

How important can a wig be to a theater production and an actor’s performance? What better way to answer that question then with a section from the recent book, The Ascent of Angels in America: The...

In the Moment: ‘Waiting for Godot’ Interviews with Creative Production Staff

Bleak? Nope, not at all. Galway, Ireland-based theater company Druid’s touring production of Samuel Beckett’s warhorse of postwar failure and ennui, Waiting for Godot, at Shakespeare Theatre Company...

Review: Druid’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ at the Shakespeare Theatre Company

“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness,” says Nell in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Druid’s production of Waiting for Godot at the Shakespeare Theatre Company proves the truth of this statement again and...

Review: ‘C.S. Lewis Onstage: The Most Reluctant Convert’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre

That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant...

Review: ‘Potted Potter’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Potted Potter, Potted Productions’ rollicking parody of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels, is full of toy snakes, terrible wigs, and boatloads of physical comedy. The audience plays Quidditch. The...

Magic Time!: Michael Urie Opens Up About His Hamlet at Shakespeare Theatre Company

When I had a chance to ask Michael Urie some questions about his performance as Hamlet, I learned he can hold forth as insightfully as the character he plays. Well, maybe minus the verse and plot. But...

Dangereuse: The Two Noras: ‘Noura’ at the Shakespeare Theatre Company (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Noura, the story of a Chaldean Christian refugee from Iraq, is a magnificent production. The acting is first-rate, the technical aspects flawless, the whole experience complex and full of deep...

Michael Kahn Announces His Final Season as Artistic Director of Shakespeare Theatre Company

At a presentation in Lansburgh Theatre Wednesday morning, Michael Kahn announced Shakespeare Theatre Company’s 2018-2019 Season. With two world premieres from celebrated playwrights, a multiple Tony...

Review: ‘Noura’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Imagine this: it is the night before Christmas. A silent snow blankets New York City, and inside a spare living room, a woman dozes in front of her Christmas tree. Her adolescent son snuggles into the...

Interview: ‘Noura’ Playwright Heather Raffo, (Women’s Voices Theater Festival) at STC

Have you ever met someone who left you feeling as though there is nothing you can’t do? I got that feeling each time I sat down with four playwrights and a director who identify as women of color from...

Review: ‘Hamlet’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

The Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of Hamlet, directed by Michael Kahn, is a rich, multi-layered interpretation of a uniquely great play. Hamlet is central to the Western literary tradition....

Review: ‘Imogen’ by Pointless Theatre (Women’s Voices Theater Festival)

Imogen, Pointless Theatre’s adaptation of Cymbeline, places one of Shakespeare’s most confusing heroines at the center of a battle for her independence. As in Cymbeline, Imogen has to contend with a...

Dangereuse: ‘Twelfth Night’ at the Shakespeare Theatre Company – Present Mirth Hath Present Laughter

Many consider Twelfth Night Shakespeare’s supreme achievement in comedy. It is also one of his most popular and frequently produced plays. George Bernard Shaw, who hated Shakespeare, described it as a...

Review: ‘Twelfth Night’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Shakespeare Theatre Company has set Twelfth Night inside of an airport lounge, and why shouldn’t they, it is their production, not ours, and Lee Savage’s design is a marvel of verisimilitude, so it...

In the Moment: ‘ReDiscovery Series’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

It was a festive, most satisfying evening of high-end arts entertainment and education. And it was totally free. What was it? It was a recent Monday evening at The Lansburgh with the Shakespeare...

Review: VelocityDC Dance Festival

Velocity is speed with purpose: a change in distance over time, crucially defined by direction. The VelocityDC Dance Festival took us in many. In its ninth iteration, the variety-style performance,...

Spine: Love and Menace in ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Collection’ at Shakespeare Theatre Company

Early Pinter is marked by menace. The Room, The Birthday Party, and The Homecoming leave a chill in the air, and in the audience’s agitated brain. We are disturbed as much by what we don’t know as by...