Bad Quarto Productions' LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST Opens Tonight

Bad Quarto Productions, a theatre company specializing in performing modern theatre using Shakespearean staging techniques, opens it's current production of Love's Labour's Lost: The First Quarto at 353 W. 48th St. in New York City on August 19th. The production runs through August 27th.

The cast of Love's Labour's Lost includes Amy Hayes as Holfernes (America is Hard to See, Life Jacket Theatre), Audrey Brown as Longaville (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Amazon), Courtney M. McClellan as Berowne (Garbage Person Karaoke, Capital Fringe Festival), Kevin Dang as Katherine (The Madness of Hercules, New York Euripides Summer Festival), Kitty Mortland as Ferdinand (King Lear, What Dreams May Co.), Marcella Pereda as Don Armado (Remington and Weasle, Pygmalion Productions), Max Stein as Rosaline (Melodramatic, Abingdon Theatre), Melody Lam as the Princess of France (Macbeth, Theatre2020), Natasha Cole as Costard (Kultar's Mime), Olivia Vessel as Moth (Hair, Heights Players), Elizabeth Kipp-Giusti as Dumain (The Public Theater), Rebekah Carrow as Boyet/Dull (Mary V, Theatre for the New City), and Samantha Renèe Burkard as Maria/Jacquenetta (A Christmas Carol, Titan Theatre Co.). Love's Labour's Lost is directed by Alex Dabertin.

Shakespeare's classic comedy of love's triumph is rarely performed in its earliest printed version; and Bad Quarto Productions presents the play using its signature style of combining modern text work with Shakespeare's staging conditions. Bad Quarto Productions' performances combine detailed understanding of Elizabethan language with the liveliness of improv to deliver productions of Shakespearean plays as intensely raw as their original stagings. Universal lighting, cross-gender casting, audience interaction, live acoustic music, minimal scenery, and contemporary costumes are used to bring the Renaissance play-going experience to modern audiences to help, in the words of Artistic Director Tony Tambasco, "see Shakespeare the way Shakespeare meant his plays to be seen.".

Love's Labour's Lost will play at Studios 353 (353 W. 48th St., New York) on August 19th, 20th, and 26th at 8 PM, and August 20th and 27th at 2 PM. The house opens 20 minutes before curtain times. Love's Labour's Lost is approximately 100 minutes long, and will be performed without an intermission. Bad Quarto invites all audience members to come early and enjoy live acoustic music performed by the cast prior to each performance.

Tickets are available through Brown Paper Tickets at http://loveslabours.bpt.me/. For more information please visit Bad Quarto Productions online at http://www.BadQuarto.org. Questions may be directed to info@badquarto.org, or by phone at (646) 598-2128 between 10 AM and 6 PM.

About Bad Quarto Productions: Bad Quarto Productions was founded in 2010 to explore the rarely performed plays of Shakespeare's time, and the ways in which Shakespeare's staging techniques can inform modern theatrical productions. The company has produced the earliest printed version of Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of a Shrew ("a shrew" not "the shrew"); the first performance of The Merry Devil of Edmonton in the modern era; and The Ballad of Dido, an original musical developed using Shakespearean techniques. Bad Quarto Productions continues to look for new ways of bridging the gap between Shakespeare's theatre and the Modern Stage.

Photo credit: James M. Smith