Six-Month Shakespeare in Washington Fest Launches in D.C.

Over the next six months, Washington, D.C. audiences will be treated to a veritable banquet of Shakespeare plays, according to Variety.

The "Shakespeare in Washington" festival, which launched with a free, full-capacity reading of Twelfth Night at the Kennedy Center on January 6th, will encompass over 100 events, presented by about 60 cultural groups.  There will be "more than 500 performances of seemingly every stripe."

Created by Kencen president Michael M. Kaiser and curated by Michael Kahn, the acclaimed artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre, the festival will also include dance and musical performances, lectures and museum exhibitions.

Upcoming performances include the Royal Shakespeare Company's Coriolanus at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theatre (presented as the final entry in the British company's five-year residency program), the Shakespeare Theatre's production of Richard III, starring Geraint Wyn Davies, Washington Shakespeare Theatre's stagings of King Lear, Edward III and Macbeth, and Kirov Ballet and Opera's productions of the ballet Romeo and Juliet and Verdi's opera Falstaff.  Signature Theatre will present a new staging of Hamlet, by the Cameri Theater of Tel Aviv, Israel.

The Shakespeare in Washington Festival will also include adaptations of Shakespeare classics.  Woolly Mammoth Theatre will stage David Greenspan's She Stoops to Comedy, Synetic Theatre will offer an abstract, wordless Macbeth, and Rorschach Theater will present Rough Magic, Roberto Auguirre-Sacasa's take on The Tempest.  Other adaptations will include Theater J's reading of Arnold Wesker's Shylock, based on The Merchant of Venice, starring Theodore Bikel/>.  Tom Stoppard/>'s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - perhaps the most famous of Shakespeare adaptations - will be staged by Studio Theatre.

Visit this link for more information on the Shakspeare in Washington Festival.

Photo - Theodore Bikel