Staging Shakespeare

We ask theater artists across the country to tell us why it isn’t.

Sometimes it seems like January and February drag on forever. Thankfully, in 2023, there’s lots of thrilling theater to keep our spirits up. Here’s our round-up of performances from our theater partners across the United States this winter.

In this bilingual Hamlet, a Black and Latinx prince has his sense of identity fractured by the loss of his Black father.

This month, Shakespeare theaters across the country are getting ready for the holidays with stories of Scrooge-i-ness defeated. Even Malvolio learns a lesson!

Two Tempests blow onstage this month, in Atlanta, GA, and Bethesda, MD. Meanwhile, Macbeth conquers Seattle. Here’s what the Folger’s Shakespeare theater partners are up to in November.

Katherine Gillen, Adrianna M. Santos, and Kathryn Vomero Santos write about stage adaptations of "Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet" that engage with Día de los Muertos traditions, reframing Shakespeare’s meditations on life and death according to Indigenous and Latinx worldviews.

King John (2022): Jessika D. Williams in “King John,” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Photo by Jenny Graham. The fall harvest is ready, and this year, we’ve got a bumper crop of Shakespeare plays! If you’re in the mood for…

Find out what's onstage at a Shakespeare theater near you in September.

"Nowhere does Shakespeare attend more to theatrical enterprise and potential than in A Midsummer Night's Dream," writes Michele Osherow, Folger Theatre's resident dramaturg. "It makes the play irresistible to those who practice theatre and to those who crave its incomparable pleasures." Read more in this playbill excerpt from Folger Theatre's new production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," onstage through August 28 as part of "The Playhouse" at the National Building Museum.

Austin Tichenor explores small-cast Shakespeare and the artistic possibilities of a few performers playing multiple roles.

Lolita Chakrabarti shares historical context about pioneering 19th-century Black actor Ira Aldridge, the subject of her play Red Velvet, including a notable detail about his funeral in Poland which she learned after she'd written the play.