The Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival is in rehearsals for a 14-play season of playwrights ranging from The Bard to Ben Johnson to Chekhov to Plautus by way of Stephen Sondheim. The Ontario fest is the most ambitions repertory theatre company in North America employing a company numbering over 116 actors supported by a staff of 121. The company is helmed by multiple Tony Award(R) winner Des McAnuff, Artistic Director Emeritus of the San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse, one of my favorite directors (along with Lee Breuer of Mabou Mines).While attending the Festival during my teens, an imperative sense of consistent acting style in period plays with rich character work was instilled in me. The creation of characters in Festival productions is daring character work compared to the range of persona I see on our regional American stages. The acting in this company always made for exciting hours of engagement in the dark and goaded my determination to continue my actor training.
If you love the classics and a good musical consider attending the Stratford Festival. It's the closest thing you'll find to the U.K. brand of production for half the price. Better yet, the City of Stratford has built and gardened the likes of the original Stratford around the Festival theatres.
The line up
Macbeth
West Side Story Cyrano de Bergerac
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The Importance of Being Earnest
Julius Caesar
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Three Sisters
Bartholomew Fair
Ever Yours, Oscar
Phèdre
The Trespassers
Rice Boy
Zastrozzi
Home Page
www.stratfordfestival.ca
Available at the SSF website are multimedia, webcasts with interviews, videos, photos, activities, lectures, meet the company events, docs...
Theatre pics from top: Festival Theatre, Avon Theatre, Tom Patterson Theatre and Studio Theatre
(photos: Stratford Shakespeaer Festival)
No comments:
Post a Comment