Dear Friends,

At Actors’ Shakespeare Project, it is our practice as artists to listen: to listen to our audience, our peers, our colleagues, and the news. What we learn from this practice of listening serves us in creating a season that reflects the concerns of our community and our country. The plays we choose must resonate and connect with you at this time in your life, with your heart, mind, and body.

The 2017-18 season includes Exit the King, Julius Caesar, and Richard III, a roster of plays that resonate with our times and highlight certain aspects of human nature that can be unsettling. These plays explore the theme “The Downfall of Despots.”

In each of these productions we will strive to examine what it means to face the crisis of dictatorship, the prospect of national ruin, and the ultimate destruction of the narcissistic ruler at the core of each story. Much Ado About Nothing takes us on a lighter-hearted journey of love, yet still explores how cunning and mischief can unravel reputations and relationships.

We hope we have listened well to your concerns about what it means to be human today in 2017. We have chosen this season for you so that we may collectively examine our shared humanity and current experience through the lens of Shakespeare and Ionesco.  As a company of artists we look forward to making the exploration with you, in the hope that we may all become better people, artists and members of society.

Thanks for your interest and continued support of our work!
Maurice Emmanuel Parent & Paula Plum
Co-Acting Artistic Directors