Since 2001, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis has been chiefly known for thrilling audiences with its annual, free summer productions in Forest Park, and its education/touring program, In the Schools, has been in place since that first season, exposing kids to Shakespeare with performances and workshops. 2012 brought In the Streets, featuring an original work based on one of Shakespeare’s plays, performed in and thematically tailored to reflect the character of highlighted neighborhoods, and of course there’s Shake 38, launched in 2010 -- a marathon five day festival with various companies staging all of Shakespeare's 38 plays in a variety of locations around the city.
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Winnifred (Katy Keating), Ellsworth (Gary Wayne Barker)
and Maggie (Michelle Hand).
Photo credit: Phillip Hamer Photography
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Its new program, In the Works, showcases contemporary American plays with a kinship to Shakespeare, and George Brant’s heartening and heroic Into the Breeches! makes its regional debut as the Festival’s inaugural headliner. Also featured are family matinees of A Most Outrageous Fit of Madness, inspired by The Comedy of Errors and written by the Festival’s playwright-in-residence, actor and director Nancy Bell, along with staged readings of Michael Sáenz’s coming-of-age story, The Thousand Natural Shocks.
