Austin Shakespeare Announces 22-23 Season

Austin Shakespeare's upcoming season brings back their most popular playwrights and a new collaboration. To kick off the season, the company will return with A Night of Ellington/Strayhorn at 7:30 pm Sunday Oct. 2 at Parker Jazz Club, and then return to the Long Center's intimate Rollins Theatre, where Austin Shakespeare is a resident company, for Jane Austen's beloved romance Sense & Sensibility, November 11-November 27, 2022. In 2023, the season also includes a staged reading of Athol Fugard's Master Harold and the Boys, Shakespeare's Birthday: Celebrate Sonnets and Young Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors.

A Night of Ellington/Strayhorn will feature jazz diva Pam Hart and pianist Ryan Howard relishing the fabulous lyrics of the gifted young legendary Billy Strayhorn with songs like "Daydream," "Lush Life," and "Something to Live For."

"Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was our most popular show at the Long Center, so we are thrilled to do Sense and Sensibility, her first story about two young sisters - marriageable - but with unique personalities: the sensible Elinor Dashwood and the impulsive Marianne Dashwood," said Austin Shakespeare Artistic Director Ann Ciccolella. "And, there are, of course, young gentlemen: the wild romantic John Willoughby, the more mature Colonel Brandon and the reserved Mr. Edward Ferras." The company will also invite high school students to a daytime "informance."

Award-winning actor Marc Pouhé will star in South African playwright Athol Fugard's Master Harold and the Boys at KMFA's new Draylen Mason Music Studio in a weekend of staged readings January 13-15, 2023. Set in 1950 apartheid era South Africa, the play explores the challenges between a young white teenager and two older Black servers in his mother's cafe who, in fact, have been raising him. Director Ciccolella said "Fugard is one of our greatest living playwrights and this script is funny and touching as well as powerfully dramatic."

Next up from February 17-March 5, 2023, the professional theater company will stage British playwright Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing set in the early 1980s. The witty plot explores marriage fidelity and infidelity and includes an array of mid-20th Century pop music. "Our audiences have loved the productions we did of Stoppard's Arcadia, The Invention of Love and Indian Ink," Ciccolella said. "The Real Thing offers that same clever writing and exploration of relationships."

Sunday, April 23, brings a new project. Shakespeare's Birthday: Celebrate Sonnets will be a collaboration with The Pease Park Conservancy featuring poetry, music and dance as well as cake and beverages. The free event will feature the park's newly restored 1920 Tutor cottage and terrace.

In early summer, Young Shakespeare, Austin Shakespeare's teen company, returns for its 15th year with Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors in a circus style at The Curtain, a replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. The company will audition young actors ages 13-19 who will have the privilege of performing in that unique setting.

ABOUT AUSTIN SHAKESPEARE: "The Bard is only the beginning." Audiences travel many roads with this professional company for surprising and entertaining theater productions featuring heightened language at The Long Center's Rollins Studio Theatre in the fall and spring, as well as Young Shakespeare at the Curtain Theater Elizabethan replica. Founded in 1984 and now the only professional classical theater company in Central Texas, Austin Shakespeare stages performances that are fresh, bold, imaginative, thought-provoking and eminently accessible - connecting the truths of the past with the challenges and possibilities of today. Austin Shakespeare is dedicated to diverse casting, staffing and audience development. The company's ongoing "Shakespeare Aloud" reading group and "Artist's Way" sessions invite new participates weekly, and the company's education program Shakespeare 20/20 sends professional actors into schools to encourage love of language. #ATXTheatre

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