Booking and details
Get TicketsDates Sat, Sep 13, 2025 at 5pm
Venue Reading Room
Tickets $20 Members / $25 Nonmembers
Duration 1 hour
Join Folger Artist Fellow Ania Upstill for a musical showcase of Antonio! a queer, punk, pirate musical starring Shakespeare’s ultimate dramatic love interest, developed in part during Upstill’s 2024 residency.
About Antonio!
What if Shakespeare wasn’t just reusing a character name, but instead was inspired by one hopelessly romantic pirate looking for love in all the wrong places? Antonio! reimagines all of Shakespeare’s Antonios as one proudly queer pirate stealing hearts and booty on the high seas—that is, when he’s not in London, regaling his playwright lover with tales of love and adventure.
Fed up with Will taking his stories but erasing their gay content, Antonio takes the stage with his pirate rock band The Fools for Love, bringing the audience on a journey through the love stories that inspired The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, and The Tempest.
Declared “as intelligent as it is engaging… potentially a cult classic” (The Stage), Antonio! received rave reviews during its 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival run and 2025 Australasia tour.
About the writer
Ania Upstill
Ania (they/them) is a queer and trans theatre maker, educator, and clown.
They hold a Master of Arts in Applied Theater from the City University of New York, and are a graduate of the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre (Professional Training Program). As a theater maker Ania’s work celebrates LGBTQIA+ artists with a focus on gender diversity, and through their company Butch Mermaid Productions Ania seeks to make queer joy irresistible and contagious, envisioning a world where all queer people experience joy and belonging. As a teaching artist and facilitator, Ania works for institutions including Lincoln Center Theatre, New York Theater Workshop, Theater of the Oppressed NYC and New Victory Theater. Ania also co-owns GenderWise, a gender diversity training company that aims to upskill educators, administrators and arts workers to better support gender diverse young people and audiences.
Related blog post
Early Modern Piracy: A Matter of Perspective
Artistic Fellow Ania Upstill deals with the tricky line between pirate and privateer in the Early Modern world
About Folger Institute
The Folger Institute is a center for early modern research at the Folger Shakespeare Library that brings public audiences together with researchers to explore the cultures and legacies of the early modern world. Learn more.