Lisa Wolpe to Bring SHAKESPERIENCES to HERE

Fresh off a successful international tour, actress Lisa Wolpe - hailed for her dynamic, gender-bending turns as some of Shakespeare's most popular characters - has announced she will bring her groundbreaking, one-woman show Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender to HERE for 16 performances, July 16th through August 14th. The show will play in repertory with Macbeth3, Wolpe's celebrated three-actor adaptation of the Scottish play, in which she plays the title role, Nick Salamone plays Lady Macbeth and Satan, and Mary Hodges plays Duncan, the Porter, Banquo, and MacDuff.

Both Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender and Macbeth3 have earned 5 star reviews in the U.S and the U.K. in their respective productions. This is the first time the two critically successful productions have run together. "I'm so happy to be bringing these stories to a New York audience", says Wolpe. "Both are stripped, down, explosive, gender-bent theater pieces. Both offer intricate stories of conscience and courage, and complicated explorations of murder and consequence".

Wolpe's long association with Shakespeare is widely lauded - she has arguably played more of Shakespeare's male roles than any woman in history. And, as an extraordinarily accomplished performer and artistic director of the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company, she has been called one of the best interpreters of the Bard. In Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender, she contextualizes her interpretations of some of the

many critically acclaimed Shakespearian roles she has performed - including Hamlet, Richard III, and Shylock - while exploring her own life story from childhood to maturity. Her work speaks towards liberation from the "gender box" of expectations, and offers a unique and powerful perspective of courage, resilience and hope against her family's troubled background of war, sickness, suicide and despair. "I wrote Alchemy for my Dad and his story is interwoven with some of the most beautiful Shakespearean texts ever written", says Wolpe. "I think it pairs well with Macbeth3 - the two plays talk to each other about war and suicide, hatred and survival, life and death. Both are fast-paced depth charges about humanity, and we have an amazing company to deliver them."

The productions are part of SubletSeries@HERE: a curated rental program, which provides artists with subsidized space and equipment, as well as technical support.

Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender played in London last summer for a two-week run at the Rose Playhouse. It has played in various iterations at: Provincetown Women's

Theater Festival, Los Angeles (Whittier College, The Miles Playhouse, Skylight Theater, UCLA), SpringWorks Festival, Stratford Ontario; Vancouver, B.C.; Chicago, Hope College, MI, Richmond Shakespeare Company, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Shakespeare's Birthplace, Stratford-Upon-Avon, U.K.; The Rose Playhouse, U.K.; Orlando Shakespeare Theater, FL, and New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane University.

Macbeth3 is a thrilling, one-hour adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. The show, which immerses audiences in the mysteries of murder, Satanic seduction, and gender-bent horror, has had critically praised performances both nationally and internationally. Wolpe co-directs with Natsuko Ohama. The creative team includes Mia Torres, Set Design; Kelly Horrigan, Costumes; Sue Brandt, Lights, and Denise Hurd, fight choreographer.

Lisa Wolpe is a celebrated actress, director, teacher, producer, and founder and artistic director of the Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company (LAWSC), an award- winning all-female, multi-cultural theater company. LAWSC was named by LA Magazine as "one of the ten coolest things to do in Los Angeles", and has been featured on PBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS News. Honors for Wolpe include the Los Angeles Drama Critics award for Sustained Excellence, The Lee Melville Award for Outstanding Contribution to the LA Theater Community and the Shakespeare Theater Association "Sidney Berger Award" for outstanding work as a visionary Artistic Director; she was awarded the Key to Harlem and a Congressional Certificate of Merit for her work with the Harlem Shakespeare Festival in 2013. Her work continues to receive critical praise and was recently highlighted in American Theatre Magazine.

Both Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender and Macbeth3 are produced by Lisa Wolpe and Los Angeles Women's Shakespeare Company in association with Parity Productions.

Dates for Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender at HERE: July 16 - August 14

July 16, 17, 19, 26 @ 7pm, Aug 2-3, 9-10 @ 7pm, Sat and Sun @ 2pm (7/23-8/14)

Dates for Macbeth3 at HERE:

July 22 - August 14
Thursday - Sunday @ 7pm, Wed 7/27 @ 7pm

HERE, 145 6th Ave. (Enter on Dominick, 1 Block South of Spring) For Tickets & Information: visit here.org or call 212-352-3101

LAWSC website: http://www.lawsc.net