In the piece, they discuss Tina’s reasons for choosing the play (the last show in her final season planned as Artistic Director), the roles of women in late-18th-Century French society, and how you—the audience—can affect what you see on stage. They even perform a scene from the play! Check it out on WAMC’s website, or listen below:

The Festival weekend in Founders’ Theatre will be as follows. Visit the Fall Festival of Shakespeare page for details on in-school performances the week before.

Click here to buy tickets now for the 21st Annual Fall Festival of Shakespeare!

Thursday, November 19
6:30 – Chatham High School – Pericles, Prince of Tyre
8:30 – Lenox Memorial High School – Julius Caesar

Friday, November 20
6:30 – Lee High School – King John
8:30 – Mt. Greylock Regional High School – As You Like It

Saturday, November 21
1:30 – Taconic High School – Macbeth
3:30 – Mount Everett Regional High School – Romeo and Juliet
6:30 – Monument Mountain Regional High School – Richard III
8:30 – Springfield Central High School – The Merry Wives of Windsor

Sunday, November 22
1:30 – Taconic Hills High School – King Lear
3:30 – North Andover High School – As You Like It
5:00 – The Reverence

Also check out the latest Common Class video — the Tech Common Class! (Available at the Fall Festival of Shakespeare’s Facebook Page)

To start, here’s a video of last week’s Common Class in Dance/Movement:

White People features Jason Asprey (also playing Hamlet), Michael Hammond (playing Iago in Othello) and Dana Harrison. Buy tickets now.

Check out our interview with the playwright J.T. Rogers right here:

Listen to the story above, or check out the story at WBUR.org.

At the time she was obsessed with Shakespeare, but she wanted to approach his texts her own way. This ran against the genteel delivery style most teachers and directors embraced.

“Enunciating, pushing the vowels to the front of the mouth — especially for the women,” Packer says. “It’s all nonsense; Shakespeare’s dirty as hell and full of life and full of vivacity.”

So Packer abandoned her career as an actor in England, raised some money in the U.S., and founded her own company in the Berkshires. She was one of the first women to direct Shakespeare professionally. Packer says it’s a natural fit.

Contribute to Shakespeare & Company:

A call to action from Shakespeare & Company: Tina Packer (Founding Artistic Director), Jonathan Croy (Youth Programs Director), Dave Demke (Associate Director of Training), Alexandra Lincoln (School Programs Manager), Jenna Ware (Associate Director of Education), Josie Wilson (Education Artist), Sam Shuker Haines (Young Company Student), Catherine Glavicic (Training Programs Manager), Tyisha Turner (Box Office Representative/Education Alumna), Michael F. Toomey (Education Artist), Elizabeth Aspenlieder (Director of Publicity and Playbill Advertising), Sophie Breton (Corporate Controller), Govane Lohbauer (Costume Director), Dana Harrison (Audience Services Manager/Education Artist), Ute DeFarlo (Director of Development), Victoria Vining (Group Sales Director), Jeremy Goodwin (Associate Director of Publicity and Playbill Advertising), Kevin G. Coleman (Director of Education), Jim Day (Costume Rentals Supervisor), Kari Daly (Ticketing Services Manager), Enrico Spada (Marketing & Web Manager), Mike Clary (Director of Communications), Bob Lohbauer (Weapons Master).

Tina and Elizabeth discuss the upcoming season titles, returning to Shakespeare & Company’s creative roots and Joe Donahue’s wish to be Tina Packer when he grows up. Listen below or visit WAMC’s website.

STAA president Philp Sneed (Colorado Shakespeare Festival) and Tina Packer (Shakespeare & Company). Photo: Danny Kurtz.

Shakespeare & Company this week hosted the annual conference of the Shakespeare Theatre Association of America. Comprised of over 60 Shakespearean theatres across the US, Canada and even the UK and Mexico, STAA provides a forum for artistic and managerial leadership to discuss ideas and share methods of work, resources and information.

This year’s conference was attended by over 150 artists and managers and was hosted in Shakespeare & Company’s new Production and Performing Arts Center and the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre. It was a tremendous honor for Shakespeare & Company to host so many leaders in the field at our home.

WAMC (listen), Capital News 9 (watch the video) and the Berkshire Eagle all visited us during the conference. Check out their stories at their websites. Listen to the WAMC story below.

Welcome to 2009. With the upcoming inauguration and economic news swirling around us, it promises to be a most fascinating year! 2008 showed what a Company of committed artist managers can do, when backed by friends, companies and foundations who share ideals.

Together we undertook a major capital campaign and inaugurated the new Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre with a world premiere. We extended our season to more performances across more months than ever, and sent Hamlet on a national Equity tour that brought Shakespeare’s masterpiece to several thousand people in venues across the country.

Topping it all off, in November we celebrated the 20th Anniversary Fall Festival of Shakespeare, loosing the passion and energy of a new generation into Founders’ Theatre. When everybody says the Guitar Hero and web generation doesn’t get Shakespeare, we brought 500 teenagers to their feet in a romping, stomping celebration of his 400 year old canon. If we could put their energy into a barrel, we’d put big oil out of business!

In just a few days, Elizabeth Aspenlieder steps into the high heels of Haley Walker in the final show of our 2008-2009 season, Bad Dates, a comedy written by Theresa Rebeck—one of the freshest playwrights working in American theatre today. (Click here for more about Bad Dates)

Looking ahead to 2009, the present economy has steep challenges, and though conventional wisdom says downsize, we’re planning more programs than ever. As the year unfolds, you can expect more Shakespeare plays than ever, more new works by award-winning writers that take on real issues in today’s terms, and more free shows to bring people together. for more about

Counting on the wisdom gained from 30 years, we’ll stretch our resources, strengthen our strengths, and, as always, keep tickets affordable for everyone. The vitality of our company depends on bringing everyone through the door.

We need your support now more than ever. Help us defy the pessimism and make 2009 a year that stands out in American theatre. Let’s turn the tide, raise our voices, bring laughter to the rafters and take language, learning and self-discovery onward, not backward into the bunker!

Please contribute whatever you can to our year end campaign by January 15th, knowing that when expectations dropped, you stood up and were counted. Please continue to pass our message on to everyone you know who shares these ideals.

Thank you, best wishes, and get ready for great programs in 2009!

Tina Packer,
Founding Artistic Director

Visit the Bad Dates Mini-site for all the info about the show and our Bad Dates Stories Contest, where you can win dinner for two in Lenox and tickets to the show! You never know: your next date could be the best one. Check it out now.

Visit our Bad Dates mini-site at Shakespeare.org/baddates to learn more and how to enter. Or, if you’re ready to share, post your story right here in the comments below!

Join Elizabeth on her Bad Dates journey with her video blog. Episode one is posted below.

First, the Skidmore play (in which King Richard pits the Church and politics against each other, creating a monumental struggle for power) was well-received by students and critics alike (“craftily staged…often it is impossible to take one’s eyes away from what is transpiring on the stage” wrote one reviewer). It was Dave’s first official partnership with the college (although many Skidmore students have and continue to train at Shakespeare & Company’s Summer Training Institute).

Immediately after finishing up Richard II, Dave turned his attention to wrapping up the second-ever Conservatory at Shakespeare & Company program with last weekend’s final celebratory production of Twelfth Night.

Heading into the new year, Dave and the entire Center for Actor Training staff turn to the Month-Long Intensive, Shakespeare & Company’s signature actor training program, which brings over forty students and faculty to the frosty Berkshire hills for a month-long immersion in classical performance training from voice and text to movement and dance, fight, and clown.This will be the first Month-Long Intensive to fully utilize the new Production & Performing Arts Center and Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre at Shakespeare & Company.

You can watch Dave Demke at work in this video from last year’s Month-Long Intensive and on stage this season in The Ladies Man.

The Fall Festival of Shakespeare is now over, thanks to the courageous acts of over 450 young artists and their parents, administrators from each of the ten participating high schools, teachers, custodians, bus drivers, and the Shakespeare & Company staff of over forty directors, designers and technicians. All in all, this year’s Fall Festival of Shakespeare drew larger audiences and raised more money than any previous Festival.

We’ve got a special treat for those who couldn’t make it, or those who want to relive the excitement of those four days. Check out the video below to see the entire four days of the Fall Festival of Shakespeare—performances, technical rehearsals, and changeovers—in under four minutes.

Director of Education Kevin Coleman and Associate Director of Education Jenna Ware were interviewed on WAMC’s Roundtable for this milestone event (along with Ashley, a Lenox High School senior who played Hamlet in this weekend’s Festival). Read and see more about the Fall Festival here and here.

And check out this article in The Independent on Chatham High School’s Hamlet.

This year’s Festival, its 20th anniversary, is now underway: after two weeks of training in Lenox, the ten teams of Directors—Education Artists from all over the country—have completed recruiting in the schools, auditioning and casting their plays (not to mention cutting the plays down to 90 minutes!). Many schools are holding their first rehearsals today!

The Festival culminates with students from each of the 10 participating schools performing a Shakespeare play at their own school and then again as part of a four-day mini-marathon at Shakespeare & Company’s Founders’ Theatre, where its own Main Stage productions are mounted every summer. Shakespeare & Company’s set, props and costume departments collaborate with the education artists and the students to fashion a unique take on each play. This year’s marathon of student performances runs November 20 through 23.

Check out these videos to see what Fall Festival students and education artists have to say. And if you’ve never experienced the Fall Festival before, make plans to see it this year, November 20th-23rd (ticket info).

The play features Michael Hammond (Iago in this summer’s Othello) as Sir Simon the Spellbinder, Michael Toomey (Bassinet in The Ladies Man) as the head of the American family played by Dana Harrison, Alyssa Huhglett and Alexandra Lincoln. The show runs September 19 through November 9th in the new Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre. Buy tickets now.

Othello is written by William Shakespeare and directed by Tony Simotes, featuring John Douglas Thompson and Michael Hammond, and with music by Scott Killian, costumes by Gail Brassard, sets by Yoshi Tanokura and lights by Les Dickert. Buy tickets now.

Check out the video preview of the show, which features Kristin Villanueva as Helena and Kevin O’Donnell as Parolles (the Wall Street Journal declared: “Kristin Villanueva is fizzingly alive and responsive as Helena — she has the eye-catching energy of a star in the making — and Kevin O’Donnell is just as fine in a very different way as Parolles, the idiotic would-be fop who meets with a painfully shaming fate.”)

Othello, now in previews, opens Friday and stars John Douglas Thompson as Othello and Michael Hammond as Iago, with Merrit Janson, LeRoy McClain, Ryan Winkles, Kristin Wold, Walton Wilson, Elizabeth Aspenlieder, Michael F. Toomey, Jon Croy and Tom Rindge. Buy tickets now.

Listen to the story at WAMC’s website, or listen below.

If you missed the event, or would like to relive the power of the reading, a recording of the event is posted below as an audio podcast. The reading of the Declaration itself begins about ten minutes in, right after an introduction by Tina Packer (participating for the second year as an American citizen) and a beautiful song sung by Company members Bill Barclay, Kaitlin Henderson, and Victoria Vining.

The reading of The Declaration of Independence has become incorporated into family traditions of local residents and Company friends over the last several years and attendance for the event has grown over 100% since its humble beginnings on an uncovered stage on a hot Independence Day in 2001. The annual event came out of a desire by the Company to celebrate our democracy and the power of language to change the world. It’s never to early to mark your calendars, and plan to join us for next year’s July 4th celebrations!

Continue reading below for the full text of the Declaration of Independence.

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

The show opens this Friday at Founders’ Theatre. Buy tickets now.

The Ladies Man is written by Charles Morey and directed by Kevin Coleman, with costumes by Govane Lohbauer, lighting design by Les Dickert, set design by Carl Sprague, and sound design by Michael Pfeiffer. The production stage manager is Hope Rose Kelly.

When will you get your chance to see the new space in person? Will you come to see The Goatwoman of Corvis County, the first show to perform in the new Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, this August? Or will you come by to enjoy the public spaces? Either way, this dream is becoming a reality…

We interviewed Kevin (and peeked in on a rehearsal) to find out what makes farces work, why they’re so funny, and what kind of hi-jinx audiences can expect from The Ladies Man. (Video features actors Jonathan Croy, Julie Webster and Annette Miller in rehearsal.)

The Ladies Man begins previews this Friday, May 23rd. Buy tickets here.

You can listen to the segment at WAMC’s website.

If you haven’t seen the Tour production this Spring, check out this video preview: