In the Actors’ Renaissance Season, we create theatre with no director, little costume assistance, and very little rehearsal time—similar to the way we believe Shakespeare’s company operated. You’ll get two opportunities to party with Falstaff, but you’ll also be able to consider love and marriage, witness crime and punishment, and experience the first play from Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries.
Welcome to the winter season:
The Actors’ Renaissance is like nothing else I have ever seen. In fact, it was my first experience of the work at ASC. And I liked it so much I applied for the job!
What makes it so special is that it puts our actors at the center of the equation, empowering them to make choices and decisions both alone and together, building trust (and sometimes frustration) in one another. It’s possibly the most authentically Shakespearean thing ASC does.
We’ve added a new wrinkle to this year’s “Ren,” inviting one of our first two Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries-winning playwrights along for the ride to debut her new play. What could be more truly Elizabethan than having the writer, living, breathing, present, and working on her script within the ecstatic mix of this grand experiment?
Emboldened and Empowered Artists busting their asses to bring you great, vital stories old and new. I expect it will be a Renaissance to remember. We’re glad you are here to join us!
Ethan McSweeny,
Artistic Director
Letitia and Doricourt, though engaged for years, haven’t seen each other since they were children. In this comedy of town and country, Letitia outwits and outplays her “worldly” betrothed to win his love. A cast of characters, including Letitia’s tricky father, the divided Touchwood couple, and a pair of rogues, all wind up at a masquerade ball where mistaken identity makes the best match.
On February 14, 1551, Thomas Arden was brutally murdered in his own home. Arden of Faversham follows the scheming wife, lover, and hired henchman who carried out the notorious murder that rocked Elizabethan England. One of the earliest domestic tragedies to focus on ordinary, lower-class citizens, this play proves that a grisly, true-crime tale always captivates audiences.
Anne Page didn’t always hate fun. Now unsmiling and unmarried, Anne, her seriously ill friend, her foreign exchange student, and her neighbors in Windsor, New Hampshire protest marriage, risk their hearts, confront loss, and celebrate life. Romance, humor, and a loving portrait of contemporary small town life blend in this new play inspired by Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.
In this thrilling and poignant coming-of-age story, Shakespeare gives us the whole world: the fabulous fat knight, the troubled king, the hot-blooded warrior, the prodigal prince, and the crew of big-hearted Eastcheap rabble-rousers. Henry IV, Part 1 is Shakespeare’s masterful exploration of family and friends; honor and happiness; and those moments when we are forced to choose between the thing we desire and the thing we know we must do.
Urban legend claims that Queen Elizabeth asked Shakespeare to write a play featuring “the fat knight in love.” In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is certainly in lust, if not truly in love. The objects of his affection, two clever Windsor wives, team up to outsmart and outmaneuver one of Shakespeare’s most beloved bad boys. Romance, farce, and a loving portrait of Elizabethan domestic life blend in this irresistible comic confection.