Shakespeare & Company

Shakespeare & Company announces the first four titles of the 2024 season, including a World Premiere and a musical exploration of Shakespeare’s language and music.  In addition to titles yet to be announced, Shakespeare & Company's 47th Season includes: 

Adapted from an acclaimed translation by Robert Fagles, An Iliad refreshes Homer’s world classic and transforms the epic poem into a riveting account of the Trojan War, told in the present-time complete with nods to modern-day events.

Shakespeare & Company will present March Mash-up: Contemporary Readings and Comedy on Saturday, March 26 and Sunday, March 27.

Shakespeare & Company has announced tickets are on sale now for the three Classic productions of its 45th Season: Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and Measure for Measure, and An Iliad, an adaptation of Homer’s epic poem by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare.  

Shakespeare & Company announces  the first three titles slated for production during its 45th Season, beginning in June 2022. Two works by Shakespeare and a modern production will open the season, which also marks the one-year anniversary of The New Spruce Theatre – Shakespeare & Company’s 500-seat amphitheater, constructed in the summer of 2021.

Written by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon and directed by Ariel Bock, The Wickhams features many familiar characters of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, as well as some new faces: a no-nonsense housekeeper, a spirited new maid, and a love-sick, enterprising footman. The staff is deeply engaged in holiday preparations at Pemberley, the estate of Elizabeth and Darcy.

Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary Film at the 2021 Berkshire International Film Festival (BIFF) and the first feature-length film project in the Company’s 44-year history, Speak What We Feel follows hundreds of students from 10 high schools across Berkshire, Hampden, and Columbia counties as they prepare to stage a full production of a Shakespeare play under the guidance of Shakespeare & Company education artists.

Holiday greetings from Allyn Burrows the artistic director of Shakespeare & Company. With hope for a New Year and a lively summer season.

In response to the financial impact caused by COVID-19, Shakespeare & Company is cutting expenses and launching the Springboard fundraising campaign to help cover the loss of earned income from ticket sales this summer. The Company’s administrative offices will be on limited hours and limited operations July 6 through October 4.

Shakespeare & Company is postponing its 2020 Summer Season to next summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic (coronavirus).

Shakespeare saw the theatres closed two times in as many years due to the plague, and he subsequently must have viewed the world through the lens of what the epidemic wrought.

The 2020 season of Shakespere and Company starts on May 21 with Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell. The small stage production features Annette Miller. King Lear opens at the Tina Packer Playhouse on June 28. Berkies Award winner, director Regge Life returns to anchor the season with Harold Pinter's Betrayal on September 18.

You may have seen Twelfth Night, perhaps a dozen times. But don't miss one more sharply directed by Allyn Burrows at Shakespere & Company in Lenox. What a hoot yet again to see the absurd Malvolio, a love sotted fool, decked out in yellow stockings with crossed garters. Expect a raucous night of fun, fun, fun.

There will be four plays by Shakespeare. Contemporary plays include Pulitzer Prize finalist The Waverly Gallery by Kenneth Lonergan; Tony Award nominated play The Children by Lucy Kirkwood; Pulitzer Prize winner Topdog/Underdog by MacArthur Foundation Fellowship recipient Suzan-Lori Parks; and Time Stands Still by Obie Award winner Donald Margulies.

Dennis Krausnick was a leader of Shakespeare & Compan, in Lenox, since its inception. In 1976 he was awarded an M.F.A. in Acting from New York University. It was at N.Y.U. where he met Tina Packer. They married in 1998. In 1978 Dennis helped found Shakespeare & Company with Tina and Kristin Linklater.

Shakespeare & Company announces its 2018 summer season. Exploring themes of Delight, Deceit, and Desire, the season includes three Shakespeare plays: Macbeth, As You Like It, and Love's Labor's Lost; plus the New England Premiere of Morning After Grace by Carey Crim; Creditors by August Strindberg adapted by David Greig; Heisenberg by Laurence Olivier Award winner Simon Stephens; Mothers and Sons by Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally; and HIR by Pulitzer Prize finalist Taylor Mac.

For its fall foliage production Shakespeare & Company have produced a corker. Regge Life has directed four masters of the company in Yasmina Reza's 2009 Tony wnner God of Carnage. The all star ensemble includes S&Co. veterans Elizabeth Aspenlieder, Allyn Burrows, Jonathan Croy and Kristin Wold. Saving the best for last it is the most hilarious comedy of the Berkshire season.

Shakespeare & Company announces that Adam Davis, long-time Managing Director of the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and former Company Manager of the La Jolla Playhouse, has been named as the Company's new Managing Director.

A great production of Merchant of Venice requires inspired casting. The Tina Packer production has a truly magnficent Shylock in company member Jonathan Epstein taking on the complex and demanding role for the fifth time. It is his second with Packer. This version also has a first rate Portia in Tamara Hickey and suitably apathetic and melancholy Antonio played with nuance by John Hadden. It was Packer's intent to take the gloves off in attacking issues of race, religion, gender, homosexuality and racism.

Shakespeare & Company announceds its lineup for the 2016 summer season, which includes three Shakespeare plays: The Merchant of Venice, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Twelfth Night, plus the Regional Premieres of Or, by Liz Duffy Adams and Lauren Gunderson’s The Taming. Additional titles include Ugly Lies the Bone by Lindsey Ferrentino, a bracing drama fresh from an acclaimed Off-Broadway production, Sotto Voce by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nilo Cruz, and the return of Stephan Wolfert in Cry "Havoc!"

The Trojan War was likely to have occurred circa 1,200 B.C. It spawned the epic poem The Iliad which was passed along by troubadours and finally transcribed with the development of Ancient Greek around 800 B.C. In a riveting 90 minute, one man show for Shakespeare & Company, Michael F. Toomey provides excerpts and contemporary commentary on one of the founding works of Western literature.

Taibi Magar, in her directorial debut at Shakespeare & Company, takes audiences on a wild ride through the city of Ephesus, where two sets of identical twins who were separated at birth, collide. What ensues is hilarious, due to the acting skills of the cast and Magar's vision of bringing a modern day spin to Shakespeare's shortest comedy. The result is 90 minutes of rollicking fun.

The cycle of history plays by Shakespeare continues and unfortunately ends this season with a chamber production of the ever popular Henry V. This scaled back drama with four male and four female actors playing multiple roles has been directed by Jenna Ware. In the title role Ryan Winkles is magnificent. It adds another dimension to a superb actor who previously has been featured in comic roles.

Shakespeare & Company presents its lineup for the 2015 summer season, which includes three Shakespeare plays, Henry V, The Comedy of Errors and Hamlet, plus the Regional Premiere of Red Velvet by Lolita Chakrabarti, and the World Premiere of Jane Anderson’s Mother of the Maid, starring Tina Packer. In addition, the summer season includes The Unexpected Man by Yasmina Reza, and opens with the provocative new play by Sarah Treem, The How and the Why. The summer season was announced today by Rick Dildine, his first as Shakespeare & Company’s new Executive Director.

When Tony Simotes took over Shakespeare & Company from founder Tina Packer five years ago it soon was revealed that the company was on the brink of ruin. With negotiations and austerity the company was put on a more secure footing. It is now more stable as leadership passes to Rick Dildine..