American Shakespeare Center

ASC 2013–2014 Lineup Completes Canon

The American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Va., shortly after the new year, unveiled the schedule for its 25th Anniversary Artistic Year, and it includes 16 productions, eight of them by William Shakespeare. With this schedule, the company will have completed presenting the entire canon of Shakespeare's works.

Running from June 2013 to June 2014, the 52-week season is divided into five repertory seasons, all playing at the company's Blackfriars Playhouse. Five of the plays will be making their Blackfrairs premiers.

The summer season will feature Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and All's Well That Ends Well, along with Return to the Forbidden Planet by Bob Carlton based on The Tempest. Those titles will continue into the fall season, joined by Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer.

The Actor's Renaissance Season next winter will feature Timon of Athens, the production that will mark ASC's completion of Shakespeare's canon. That season also will feature Shakespeare's As You Like It, Epicene (or, The Silent Woman) by Ben Jonson, and The Maid's Tragedy by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, as well as the Commedia dell-Arte classic The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni.

The touring company, which will take up residence in the spring after its six-month travels, perform a trio of Shakespeare plays: Othello, Henry IV, Part One, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The holiday season will again feature Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris, and The 12 Dates of Christmas by Ginna Hoben.

“Our patrons can see more Shakespeare and Early Modern plays right here in Virginia than anywhere else on the planet,” ASC Artistic Director Jim Warren said in a press release. “In the world's only re-creation of Shakespeare's indoor theatre, we perform 52 weeks a year in true repertory, using Shakespeare's staging conditions that bring out the fun, excitement, and humanity of some of the greatest plays in the English language.”

January 13, 2013

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