Reading
Series
LOUANNA O. CARLIN & JOHN MACDONALD READING SERIES
Each season The Acting Company hosts a series of staged readings. A mixture of new texts, classics of the canon, and forgotten favorites these readings are a showcase of our alumni and a chance to explore other works by playwrights and directors featured in our National Tours.
This year the series will feature a trio of unique, insightful and hilarious interpretations of works by William Shakespeare.
The 2024 series is generously supported by Richard J. Reilly, Jr.
Puck’d: A Middle-Aged Summer Night’s Dream
Written by Emmy Award-winning alum Matt Hoverman
Directed by Tony Award-winning alum John Rando
7:30pm on December 11, 2023
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 W 42nd St, New York
A farcical sequel to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare's four young lovers are now middle-aged, chasing after their own teenaged kids – who have impetuously fled into the enchanted woods to elope. As they shift from prose to rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter, the four aging lovers once again fall under the forest’s spell, must face their fears and, with youthful passions rekindled, decide whether to evolve together. A comic, heartfelt play filled with romantic misfires and magical hijinks. Matt was part of the 2001 Acting Company national tour of the Trevor Nunn musical adaptation of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, which was also directed by John Rando.
Hamlet
Adapted from the Shakespeare by Reynaldo Piniella and Emily Lyon with translation by Christin Eve Cato
Directed by AUDELCO and Helen Hayes Award-winning Artistic Director Kent Gash
7:30pm on February 12, 2024
Peter Jay Sharp Theater
416 W 42nd St, New York
JUST ANNOUNCED! Our upcoming HAMLET reading series performance cast will feature* John Concado (Romeo y Julieta at The Public Theater), Ty Defoe (Straight White Men on Broadway), Ezra Knight (Company alum), Rad Pereira (Oresteia at the Shakespeare Theatre), Reynaldo Piniella (Trouble in Mind on Broadway), Travis Raeburn (Company alum), Daphne Rubin-Vega (currently: Night of the Iguana at Signature Theatre), and Kara Young (currently: Purlie Victorious on Broadway).
*subject to change
In this radical bilingual reimagining of Shakespeare’s story, Hamlet is a Black and Latinx prince whose sense of identity has been fractured by the loss of his Black father. This exciting new perspective on the renowned play has been developed by The Folger Shakespeare Library, Classical Theatre of Harlem and The Public. It celebrates two diverse communities, reconsiders the way language shapes the intimacy in our relationships, and considers whose stories get told, and how.
This performance is underwritten by Lori-Ann Wynter.
Antony & Cleopatra
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Arin Arbus and featuring John Douglas Thompson
7:30pm on March 25, 2024
Lucille Lortel Theatre
121 Christopher St, New York
In this classic Jacobean tragedy of love and duty Cleopatra, the Egyptian Queen and the Roman general Mark Antony scandalize Egypt and Rome alike through their passionate love affair, setting off a chain of broken alliances, jealous rages and civil war that reverberate through the known world in one of Shakespeare's greatest historical love stories.
Presented in association with Red Bull Theater.
This performance is underwritten by John and Jill Gilbert.