Staging Shakespeare

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.

Find out what’s onstage at Shakespeare theaters across the United States this summer.

Director Sam Gold shares what he loves most about Macbeth, why it stands out from other Shakespeare tragedies he’s directed, and how his ideas about the play changed over time.

Hamlet sings! A new opera version of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is onstage now at the Metropolitan Opera, with tenor Allan Clayton resuming the title role that he played for the opera’s world premiere at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2017. Read our…

Jacob Ming-Trent shares a favorite moment from his Shakespeare in the Park performance as Falstaff in “Merry Wives,” which premieres on PBS’s Great Performances May 20.

Read our round-up of May performances from Shakespeare theaters across the country.

April 23 is Shakespeare’s birthday, and this month offers a plethora of ways to celebrate!

Did you know that the Beatles once performed the “Pyramus and Thisbe” scene from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”? Although they mainly stick to Shakespeare’s script, the moments when they play with the text stand out.

Take a look at what the Folger’s theater partners have on stage this March, including a long-awaited ‘Hamlet’ in Cincinnati, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ in Atlanta, and ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ with John Douglas Thompson, coming to Washington, DC.

There’s nothing intuitive about a month with 28 (sometimes 29) days and an unpredictable number of Rs in its name. But once you see what the Folger’s theater partners have onstage this month, seeing a show at a theater near…

Joyce Green MacDonald shares the history of four Black women Shakespeareans who took to the American stage from 1821 – 1960: The African Grove Theatre’s “Miss Welsh,” Henrietta Vinton Davis, Adrienne McNeil Herndon, and Jane White.