Atlanta Shakespeare Company at the Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse to Present BY MY WILL in April

The Atlanta Shakespeare Company at The Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse has announced their special April 2023 production, BY MY WILL, a new divine comedy that explores the source of Shakespeare's genius. The production will run from April 8-30, 2023.

For hundreds of years, literary scholars and historians have debated the true authorship of Shakespeare's plays. In this new Comedy, commissioned by ASC's Artistic Director Jeff Watkins, an assortment of 16th century playwrights, poets and regal figures meet up in a unique location to determine who among them may have written the works attributed to the man from Stratford. It's a veritable comic vivisection of the authorship question with twists, turns, and bawdy humor.

From Artistic Director Jeff Watkins' point of view, doubts have abounded about the authorship question since the mid-19th century. "Many of our audience members have been curious and brave enough to explore those doubts with me over the years so I wanted to create a fun evening at the theatre delving into it with them." On a personal note, this has been a chance to reconnect with an old college friend and artistic comrade with whom he hasn't worked with for 40 years. "It's an honor and a privilege for an Artistic Director to be able to commission a new work for their theatre. And while in the history of our company it has not been unheard of to commission plays, it has been a long time. I hope we're the launching pad for this play to go on to greater and greater successes."

Cast

William Shakspere- Andrew Houchins

Edward de Vere- Vinnie Mascola

Christopher Marlowe- Kevin Roost

Anne Hathaway/ Queen Elizabeth I- Kathleen McManus

Aemilia Bassano Lanier / Eliza de Vere- Amee Vyas

Thomas Kyd- O'Neil Delapenha

John Lyly- Kenneth Wigley

Understudies- Kelly Clare Toland and Mary Ruth Ralston

About the playwright

Douglas Post's plays, which include Bloodshot, Cynical Weathers, Drowning Sorrows, Earth and Sky and Murder in Green Meadows, and musicals, which include God and Country, The Real Life Story of Johnny de Facto and The Wind in the Willows, have been produced in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Canada, England, Wales, Germany, Austria, Russia, China, and South Africa. He has also been commissioned to write screenplays for Warner Bros. and NBC, teleplays for WMAQ-TV and several radio adaptations of his scripts. On three occasions, he has been selected to develop his work at the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and once at the O'Neill National Music Theater Conference. He has received the L. Arnold Weissberger Playwriting Award, the Midwestern Playwrights Festival Award, the Cunningham Commission Award, the Blue Ink Playwriting Award and three Playwriting Fellowship Awards from the Illinois Arts Council, and he has been nominated for three Joseph Jefferson Awards and an Emmy Award. Post lives in Chicago where he is a founding member of the Victory Gardens Playwrights Ensemble, teaches playwriting at the University of Chicago Graham School and has composed songs and incidental music for more than 25 productions.

By My Will

By Douglas Post
Directed by Artistic Director Jeff Watkins

$15 General Admission Preview Thursday April 6, 2023
$20 General Admission Preview Friday April 7, 2023

Performances April 8-30, 2023

No show on Easter Sunday April 9, 2023

Purchase Tickets Online for most performances at www.shakespearetavern.com

The Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse is a registered 501 ( C ) 3 non-profit organization.

The Atlanta Shakespeare Company (ASC) at The Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse is supported in part by the Fulton County Commission under the guidance of the Fulton County Arts Council. Major support also is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs and the Georgia Council for the Arts. But, PRIMARILY, ASC is funded through the generous support provided by people just like you through the Shakespeare Club, the Royals and the Exceptions.

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