ARTS Pick: Much Ado About Nothing

Finding true love is never easy, but in Shakespeare’s world, it can be downright treacherous. Join young lovers Claudio and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing as they attempt to trick Claudio’s cousin into admitting his love for his professed enemy—while the lurking villain Don John attempts to make Claudio and Hero’s wedding end in […]

ARTS Pick: Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet)

In Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), literature scholar and self-described old maid Constance Ledbelly has reason to believe that two of Shakespeare’s iconic tragedies, Othello and Romeo and Juliet, were not originally written as tragedies at all. Too timid to show her skeptical boss her findings, Constance withdraws into her subconscious mind and the two […]

ARTS Pick: Shakespeare’s Sister

Judith Shakespeare wants to be a playwright. So when her debt-ridden father tries to marry her off, Shakespeare’s Sister flees to London with handsome actor Ned Alleyn, hoping to join her brother and realize her ambition. When she arrives in the city, she finds her brother gone, Ned engaged to another woman and her play declined. […]

American Shakespeare Center discontinues The Santaland Diaries

Backstage at the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, actor Chris Johnston pulls on a red turtleneck and green velvet knickers, a green velvet smock and red-and-white-striped stockings. He ties up a pair of Converse Chuck Taylors with jingle bells on the shoelaces and dons what he calls “a perky stocking cap decorated with […]