The American Shakespeare Center will announce the titles for its 2012/13 Artistic Year on Saturday, January 7^th immediately prior to the evening Pay-What-You-Will performance of Much Ado about Nothing.  Artistic Director Jim Warren will take the stage with the ASC Actors’ Renaissance Season Troupe and reveal the shows that will come alive at the Blackfriars Playhouse and on tour June 2012 through June 2013.  Attendees at this special event can enjoy discounted beverages prior to the show and the opportunity to purchase ticket packages for the 2012/13 shows before anyone else.  After the show, attendees are invited to remain in the Blackfriars for a question and answer session with Warren about the artistic year.

Much Ado about Nothing is the first show in the widely acclaimed Actors’ Renaissance Season, a time when the ASC goes even further into the rehearsal conditions of the English Renaissance, cutting out the directors, designers, and the months of rehearsals that Shakespeare’s company never knew. The actors often use scripts that contain only their own lines and the cues for those lines. They choose all the costumes, props, and music for the shows – and they do it all in less than a week’s rehearsal.

Artistic Director Jim Warren says, “The ARS aims to create an even stronger bond between actor and audience and an even greater level of fun and excitement by unleashing the raw energy of Renaissance drama.”

This year’s Actors’ Renaissance Season offers one of Shakespeare’s best-loved romantic comedies, Much Ado about Nothing; his powerful and well-known history, Richard III; and for the first time at the Blackfriars Playhouse, three rarely performed titles by contemporaries of Shakespeare – Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding; A Mad World, My Masters; and Dido, Queen of Carthage.

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