The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival Announces 2016 Season

Davis McCallum, Artistic Director, and Kate Liberman, Managing Director, of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival have announced next summer's 30th Anniversary Season.

Announcing the season McCallum said, "As HVSF prepares to celebrate 30 years in the Hudson Valley, we also join Shakespeare theaters around the world to mark 400 years of Shakespeare's art triumphing over his death. We will produce a trio of masterpieces from our resident playwright: As You Like It, the glorious comedy of love and imagination, set in the forest of Arden; an all-female production of Macbeth, which will focus on the Witches as the prime movers in the tragedy of Scotland, offering a new perspective on this brutal and spellbinding play; and Measure for Measure, a searing comic drama about the delicate interplay between justice and mercy, between love and desire, between the head and the heart."

The three Shakespeare plays will run in repertory from June through the end of August. Measure for Measure, will be directed by McCallum; As you Like It, will be directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch, who directed last season's acclaimed production of An Iliad, and the Fall 2014 production of Turn of the Screw; and Macbeth, will be directed by Obie Award winner Lee Sunday Evans (A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes) who will make her HVSF debut in 2016. In addition, a milestone production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town will be directed by HVSF alum John Plummer (Twelfth Night).

McCallum went on to discuss HVSF's plans for its production of Thornton Wilder's American classic, Our Town, inspired by the Public Works program at New York's Delacourt Theatre. The production will include a cast made up of professionals from the HVSF Company, alongside dozens of talented volunteers from the Hudson Valley community, including Cold Spring, Garrison, Beacon, Peekskill, and Newburgh. The collaboration will be shared with audiences in two free performances at the close of the summer, in celebration of 30 years of Shakespeare in the Hudson Highlands, and "as a tribute to the extraordinary community that has supported us over the last three decades. We hope it will be the perfect capstone to a season of milestones."

Casting will be announced after the start of the New Year.

For information about HVSF visit http://hvshakespeare.org