The Reading Room Festival V
Thursday, January 28 – Saturday, January 30, 2027
Folger Theatre’s fifth annual Reading Room Festival returns with a three-day festival of staged readings and panel discussions.
Join us for Folger Theatre’s fifth Reading Room Festival, with new work and conversations inspired by or in response to the plays of William Shakespeare. This one-of-a-kind festival unites artists, scholars, and audiences in collaboratively exploring the multifaceted nature of Shakespeare’s stories.
Playwrights have access to the Folger’s unparalleled resources and work with a director, dramaturg, and actors as they prepare their work-in-progress for a staged reading with an audience.
The Festival convenes conversations where Shakespeare serves as the starting point for generating new ideas and works, and Festival attendees have the opportunity to experience this new work at the Folger, as well as mix and mingle with the creators and artists.
How to attend the festival
All-access passes are now on sale for $100. The price increases to $125 on January 1.
Individual events – $20
Tickets for individual events will go on sale in January.
Reading Room Festival All-Access Pass – $100 until January 1
All-access passes guarantee admission to all events.
Festival successes
Over the past several years, the Reading Room Festival has introduced audiences to multiple new plays that have gone on to full-scale Folger Theatre productions, including the world premiere of Lauren M. Gunderson’s A Room in the Castle, a critically acclaimed feminist retelling of Hamlet; Al Letson’s Julius X, which remixed Civil Rights history through the lens of Shakespeare’s tragedy; and Jacob Ming-Trent’s autobiographical How Shakespeare Saved My Life.
The plays
The Question of Edward III: Who dunnit?
Featuring selections from Edward III
In a modern verse translation by Octavio Solis
Directed by Kate Pitt
Friday, January 29, 6:30pm
Who wrote The Raigne of King Edward III? Published anonymously in 1596, the play’s authorship has long been a subject of debate. As evidence mounts in favor of Shakespeare’s involvement, including recent computer analysis conducted by Shakespeare scholars and highlighted in an article in The Guardian, the Folger puts these claims to the test. Featuring performed excerpts from Octavio Solis’ Play On Shakespeare! translation of Edward III alongside selections from established Shakespeare plays, scholars, performers, and artists will make the case for why Edward III should be considered a play by Shakespeare. Will the arguments stand up? Join us for a lively discussion, culminating in a final vote by you, our audience.
Richard II
by William Shakespeare
In a modern verse translation by Naomi Iizuka
Directed by Timothy Douglas
Friday, January 29, 8pm
Shakespeare’s Richard II presents the momentous struggle between King Richard II and his disenfranchised cousin Henry Bolingbroke. It’s a story filled with unbridled ambition, treachery, conspiracies, and regicide. Naomi Iizuka’s modern verse translation, focused on the final two chaotic years of Richard II’s reign, finds new parallels for contemporary audiences about the cracks that appear through the façade of state power.
The Stowaway
By Drew Petersen
Director to be announced
Saturday, January 30, 12:30pm
Times are changing on the Island of Hockey Puck. A new Duke is ruling with an iron fist; the old Duke disappeared in a puddle of mystery, and a stowaway named Dull is on the run from it all back to her homeland of Illyria. Inspired by the plays and language of Shakespeare, The Stowaway uses live music and a sea of imagination to bring the poetry of Shakespeare to the young and young at heart!
Lady Disdain
By Lauren M. Gunderson
Based on Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Co-Directed by Nadia Guevara and Lauren M. Gunderson
Saturday, January 30, 7:30pm
A wildly successful Romantasy series needs the best of the best to voice its audiobooks. Who better, alas, than exes Bea and Ben? When they’re thrown together to record the hottest books on the market, their professional reunion becomes a battle of wits, words, and wildly inconvenient chemistry. Between breathless love scenes, epic fantasy adventures, and the delicious absurdity of recording very sexy stories with your ex, Bea and Ben must navigate the terrifying possibility that their own love story isn’t quite finished.
Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing gets a makeover—and Beatrice and Benedick a do-over—in this unapologetically sexy romantic comedy about second chances, the power of storytelling, and standing up for those you love, including yourself.
Playwrights and directors
Timothy Douglas**
Timothy Douglas (Director) Folger Theatre: Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing; Arena Stage: King Hedley II, Disgraced, Nina Simone: Four Women; The Kennedy Center: Long Way Down; Round House Theatre: A Lesson Before Dying, Permanent Collection, Two Trains Running, Father Comes Home From the Wars, Gem of the Ocean, Nine Night; Signature Theatre: Spunk, The Color Purple (Helen Hayes Award/Best Musical), Where the Mountain Meets the Sea; Theatre Alliance: Insurrection, Dontrell Who Kissed the Sea; Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company: The Last Orbit of Billy Mars. Regional: Actors Theatre of Louisville, American Conservatory Theater, Berkeley Rep, Boston Lyric Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cleveland Playhouse, Denver Center Theatre Company, Guthrie Theater, Mark Taper Forum, Milwaukee Rep, New Orleans Opera, Shakespeare and Company, South Coast Rep, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Utah Shakespeare Festival, and many others. Off Broadway: Ars Nova, Classic Stage Company. International: Downstage (New Zealand), Great Theatre of China (Shanghai), National Theatret (Norway), NIDA (Australia), Toi Whakaari (New Zealand). www.timothydouglas.org
Nadia Guevara**
Nadia Guevara (Associate Director) Folger Theatre: Cymbeline: A Telenovela Dramatic Western (Reading Room Festival 2026), DC I Love You: First Dates; Imagination Stage: Cinderella: A Salsa Fairy Tale; Keegan Theatre: N; Shakespeare Theatre Company: Merry Wives (Helen Hayes Award – Outstanding Ensemble). Regional: Dallas Theater Center, McCarter Theatre. NYC/Off-Broadway: Keen Company/Drama League: Cell; National Queer Theatre: The Survival; The Public: Apple Bottom; The New Group: The Capitalist and the Factory Worker. Additional credits with New York Stage and Film, Red Bull Theater, Latinx Playwrights Circle. Awards: Drama League Stage Directing Fellow, NALAC Fellow, Actor of the Year – San Diego Critics Circle. nadiaguevara.com
Lauren M. Gunderson
Lauren M. Gunderson (Playwright) has been one of the most produced playwrights in America since 2015, topping the list thrice including 2022-23. She is a two-time winner of the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award for I and You and The Book of Will, the winner of the Lanford Wilson Award, and a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is a playwright, screenwriter, musical book writer, and children’s author who lives in San Francisco. She graduated from NYU Tisch as a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship. LaurenGunderson.com.
Naomi Iizuka
Naomi Iizuka (Playwright – Richard II) Folger Theatre: debut. Regional: Actors Theater of Louisville: At The Vanishing Point, Aloha, Say The Pretty Girls, Polaroid Stories, War of The Worlds; Berkeley Repertory Theatre: Concerning Strange Devices from The Distant West, 36 Views; Children’s Theatre Company: Anon(ymous); Cornerstone Theater Company: 3 Truths; Dallas Theater Center: Skin; Goodman Theatre: Ghostwritten; Guthrie Theater: After A Hundred Years; Huntington Theatre Company: 36 Views; Portland Center Stage: 36 Views; Yale Repertory Theatre: Sleep; La Jolla Playhouse: What Happens Next. Off-Broadway: Brooklyn Academy of Music: Sleep, War of The Worlds; The Public Theater: 36 Views; Soho Rep: Skin. Film/Television: Terminal List, Dark Wolf (Amazon); The Sympathizer (HBO Max); Bosch Legacy (Amazon); Tokyo Vice (HBO Max); The Terror (AMC). Awards: Hermitage Major Theater Award, PEN/Laura Pels Award, Alpert Award, Whiting Award, Stavis Award, PEN Center USA West Award for Drama. Teaching: Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Dance at UC San Diego. Education/Training: BA in Literature, Yale College; MFA in Theater, UC San Diego.
Drew Peterson
Drew Petersen (Playwright) Folger Theatre: debut. The Kennedy Center: The Cerulean Time Capsule; Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts: Up and Away, Meet Me at the Fountain; Park Avenue Armory: The 7 and ½ Mysteries of Toulouse McLane, The Electric Doyenne; La Jolla Playhouse: INERTIA, [Image Description]; Classic Stage Company: The Stowaway; Paper Mill Playhouse: Bryant’s Tavern, 1780: Voices from the Past. Educator: Park Avenue Armory, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Theatre Workshop, and New Victory Theater. MA: New York University – Educational Theatre. Consultant: Brown Arts Institute, MASS MoCA, The Glasshouse, and the Charleston Gaillard Center. Past Artistic Director for Trusty Sidekick. TYA Artistic Innovation Award (2018). drewepetersen.com @drupetes
Kate Pitt
Kate Pitt (Director) Folger Theatre: four years in Public Programs, The Way of the World (associate director). Shakespeare Theatre Company: King Lear (assistant director). Regional: The Acting Company: Timon of Athens (reading), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Great Expectations, The Three Musketeers, Romeo and Juliet (associate director); Guthrie Theater: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V (assistant director); Primary Stages: Dig (associate director); MIT Shakespeare Ensemble: Henry V. Essays and comedy with The Arden Shakespeare, McSweeney’s, and Good Tickle Brain. BA: History, Yale University. www.katepitt.com, @shakespearenews.
Octavio Solis
Octavio Solis (Playwright) Folger Theatre: debut. Playwright/Director: Scene With Cranes, In the Clearing, Quixote Nuevo, Mother Road, Man of the Flesh, La Posada Mágica, Cloudlands (musical co-written with Adam Gwon), Hole in the Sky, Alicia’s Miracle, Se Llama Cristina, John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, Ghosts of the River, Lydia, June in a Box, Gibraltar, The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy, Shiner, The Seven Visions of Encarnación, Dreamlandia, El Otro, Prospect, El Paso Blue, Santos & Santos, Prospect have been mounted at theaters across the country. Selected Awards: 2019 Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre Award from the William Inge Center for the Arts, 2018 Imagen Award for his consultancy on Disney-Pixar’s Coco, 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Texas State University Black and Latino Playwrights Conference, 2014 Pen Center Literary Award for Drama, United States Artists Fellowship for 2012, 2003 National Latino Playwriting Award. Author: Retablos: Stories from A Life Lived Along the Border, published by City Lights Publishers (Silver Indies Award for Book of the Year, National Reading Group Month’s Committee for the Great Group Reads 2019 Selections); Delirio (forthcoming).
Folger Theatre Sponsors
With special thanks to
Play On Shakespeare
Share Fund
The Shubert Foundation
Premier Season Sponsors
Dr. Bill and Evelyn Braithwaite
Andrea “Andi” Kasarsky
Season Sponsors
Scott and Liz Vance
Contributing Sponsors
Keith and Celia Arnaud
Nicky Cymrot
Dr. Heather McPherson
Artist Sponsors
Karl K. and Carrol Benner Kindel