Hofstra Shakespeare Festival Celebrates 75 Years This Fall

Hofstra University is celebrating its 75th Shakespeare Festival with a production of The Merry Wives of Windsor on the University's stunning Globe Stage replica, October 27-November 5, 2023.

Performances take place at the Toni and Martin Sosnoff Theater at the John Cranford Adams Playhouse. Hofstra's Globe Stage is considered the most authentic re-creation of Shakespeare's original stage in North America, and its Shakespeare Festival is the longest-running consecutive festival of its kind in the United States.

This year's Shakespeare Festival also includes The Play's the Thing - A One-Hour Hamlet (November 2 and 4), suitable for young audiences - and a concert of early music by the Hofstra Collegium Musicum (November 4).

The Merry Wives of Windsor has been performed only three times in the history of the festival - the last time in 1992. In the comedy, disreputable Sir John Falstaff pursues two housewives, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, who outwit and humiliate him. Meanwhile, three suitors seek the hand of Anne Page, Mistress Page's daughter (Folger Shakespeare Library).

Director Keith Michael Pinault, a 2011 alum of the Drama Department, understands firsthand the impact of Hofstra's Shakespeare Festival on young actors. He spent all four of his own years at the University performing in the festival. Those experiences, he believes, set him up for a stage career and an MFA at Columbia University.

"It was incredibly formative for me in terms of what I worked on after school," he explains. "My first job as a professional actor was in Shakespeare on the Common, Boston's famous outdoor Shakespeare event. Never in a million years would I have been prepared for that had it not been for the Hofstra Shakespeare Festival."

Though not as widely read or regarded with the same esteem as Hamlet, Twelfth Night, or A Midsummer's Night Dream, Pinault and his cast have been charmed by Merry Wives.

"I love that it's about regular middle-class people," Pinault says. "There's no king. There's no duke. There's no prince. Sir John Falstaff is theoretically the highest-ranking person, so it is very much about the lives of ordinary people. As such, it may be Shakespeare's most autobiographical play, in that it's about the kind of people he grew up around."

In a time where there has been talk of banning Shakespeare in classrooms, Pinault considers that the Bard's skill at portraying the human condition is what some people find threatening.

"What's so beautiful about Shakespeare's plays and makes them different from a lot of contemporary drama is that the characters always have the best version of whatever it is that they are trying to say in that moment. And that is tremendously empowering," Pinault explains.

"It's the reason I keep coming back to Shakespeare. My whole professional life has centered around it."

Admission for The Merry Wives of Windsor is free. No tickets or reservations are needed.

Admission to The Play's the Thing and the Hofstra Collegium Musicum concert are free, but due to limited space, reserving seats is suggested at https://linktr.ee/hofstradd.

THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR

Toni and Martin Sosnoff Theater, John Cranford Adams Playhouse, South Campus

Directed by Keith Michael Pinault

Dates: Friday through Sunday, October 27-29 and November 3-5

Times: Friday, October 27 and November 3, at 8 p.m.; Saturday, October 28 and November 4, at 8 p.m.; Sunday, October 29 and November 5, at 2 p.m.

THE PLAY'S THE THING - A One-Hour HAMLET

 

by William Shakespeare

Joan and Donald Schaeffer Black Box Theater, Joseph G. Shapiro Family Hall, South Campus

Adapted by Maureen Connolly McFeely. Directed by Kerry Prep.

Date/Time:* Thursday, November 2, at 8 p.m.

*On Saturday, November 4, at 2 p.m. - Enjoy a double feature with The Collegium Musicum, directed by Christopher Morrongiello. See the concert first on the Hofstra Globe Stage at the Toni and Martin Sosnoff Theater at the John Cranford Adams Playhouse. Then proceed to the Black Box Theater for The Play's the Thing.

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