TITUS ANDRONICUS Begins Previews Tomorrow at the Public Theater

The Public Theater (Artistic Director Oskar Eustis; Executive Director Patrick Willingham) will present post-show discussions following select performances of the Public Lab production, TITUS ANDRONICUS, directed by Michael Sexton. The Public Lab Thursday Night Speaker Series for TITUS ANDRONICUS will be held following the Thursday, December 8 and Thursday, December 15 performances and consist of engaging conversations with notable panelists. Tickets are $15 for all performances and include free admission to the post-show discussions. TITUS ANDRONICUS begins previews on Tuesday, November 29 and runs through Sunday, December 18.

On Thursday, December 8, immediately following the 7:30 p.m. performance, a panel moderated by Barry Edelstein (Director of The Public’s Shakespeare Initiative) and featuring Michael Sexton (Director of Titus Andronicus) and David Scott Kastan (Professor of English at Yale University and author of Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time, Shakespeare after Theory, and Shakespeare and the Book) will focus on “Learning from the Past: A Panel on the Themes of TITUS ANRONICUS.” This panel will be co-hosted by The Shakespeare Society.

On Thursday, December 15, immediately following the 7:30 p.m. performance, a panel featuring Jay O. Sanders (playing Titus in the Public Lab production) and Isis Grant (an expert on gang violence and the head of Youth Empowerment Missions) will discuss “Eye for an Eye: A Panel on Cycles of Revenge in the 21st Century.”

In TITUS ANDRONICUS, Titus is Rome’s greatest general and the head of a noble Roman family. When his armies vanquish the Goths, their defeated queen unleashes a fury that rocks Titus’s city, devastates his children, and shatters his sense of self. The cycle of revenge is shocking, bloody, and all-encompassing, but expressed through poetry and theatricality as vivid, energized, and thrilling as anything in Shakespeare’s later works.

The Public Lab season continues in February with THE TOTAL BENT, from the creators of Passing Strange, Stew and Heidi Rodewald. The show begins performances on February 14 and runs through March 4. The Public Lab Speaker Series will take place following the THE TOTAL BENT performances on Thursday, February 23 and Thursday, March 1.

Now in its fifth season, Public Lab provides new opportunities for both our audiences and artists. Our audience gains access to more of the theater they love from The Public – both Shakespeare and new work – at the affordable price of only $15. Our artists, both emerging and established, gain a new platform to further develop their work on stage and in performance.

Barry Edelstein is in charge of The Public's Shakespeare Initiative, which oversees all Shakespeare production in Central Park and downtown – including the newly launched Mobile Unit tour to prisons, shelters, etc. – and which runs the Shakespeare Lab professional training program and The Public’s Shakespeare-related education and outreach programs. For The Shakespeare Initiative, Edelstein has supervised Measure for Measure, All’s Well that Ends Well, Love’s Labor’s Lost, The Merchant of Venice (also Associate Producer of the Broadway transfer), The Winter's Tale, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and Othello. His directing credits for The Public Theater include Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice (1995), and WASP and Other Plays. Edelstein was the dramaturg for three seasons of Joseph Papp’s “Shakespeare Marathon.” He was the Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company from 1998-2003. He has staged many productions of Shakespeare and others in NYC and around the country. As an author, his credits include Thinking Shakespeare (2007) and Bardisms: Shakespeare for All Occasions (2009).

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