LADC’s Shakespeare Youth Festival L.A. Kicks Off with VIP Party April 15

21 Mar 2016 1 Comment

by Shakespeare in LA in Educational, Fundraiser Tags: , , , ,

LADC stars and celebrities at their "A Mid-City Night's Dream" gala at Studio 11, November 9, 2014 Los Angeles, CA Photo credit: Paul Smith / Featureflash

LADC stars and celebrities at A Mid-City Night’s Dream gala at Studio 11, Nov 9, 2014 Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Drama Club launches its 10th Anniversary Season on April 15 with a VIP Party at Lyric Theatre & Voila on La Brea. As part of the event, children ages 7-17 from both South L.A and Hollywood will perform opposite Alex Kingston (Dr. Who) and Diedrich Bader (Veep) in comedic excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays. Following the performance, you’ll enjoy music, food, wine and visits from LADC’s young Players for some table-side Shakespeare.

You’ll also be invited to participate in the company’s 10 Seconds of Shakespeare campaign, where you’re given a line of Shakespeare’s text to speak into your phone and post online on their Wall of Fame.

This season of the Los Angeles Drama Club’s bi-annual Shakespeare Youth Festival L.A. runs April 16 – May 5 and coincides with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. The four plays presented during the festival feature families disrupted by internal and external storms and re-united by time and forgiveness. The first to open is The Comedy of Errors on April 16 & 17 at Club Fais Do Do.  More

Review: PERICLES, A Shakespearean Soap Opera Without the Blood

05 May 2015 Leave a comment

by Shakespeare in LA in Los Angeles, Reviews Tags: ,

PERICLES - ISC

André Martin as Pericles. Photos by Grettel Cortes

Each summer in Griffith Park, Independent Shakespeare Co. presents fully-produced large scale performances for hundreds of people on a nightly basis. Instead of the expensive dinner and a movie scenario, families flock to the park for a more neighborly picnic and a play. It’s friendly, affordable (the play is free), and fun…and that’s about as good as it gets on a summer night in LA.

During the off season, the company returns to its much smaller 49-seat theater in Atwater Village for a more experimental approach to Shakespeare and other classics. Here they are able to try out new ideas and play around with concepts that may grow into future festival productions or simply inspire short-term creativity. They also offer classes for the public, music nights, discussions, and other special one-night-only events, always with an eye to entertaining their growing community of friends and fans.

ISC’s latest studio production, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, directed by Melissa Chalsma, is a perfect example of this kind of experimentation in which the space becomes a playground, of sorts, for a small group of seven actors to bring Shakespeare’s epic adventure tale to life. More

Independent Shakespeare Co. Presents New Adaptation of Pericles, Prince of Tyre

12 Apr 2015 2 Comments

by Shakespeare in LA in Los Angeles Tags: ,

Pericles - ISC

Independent Shakespeare Co., presenters of the Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival and recipients of the 2015 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Margaret Harford Award for sustained excellence in theater, will produce a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre, April 24 – May 2. Directed by ISC Artistic Director Melissa Chalsma, the fantastic story includes shipwrecks, pirates, a king who uses the skulls of his victims as interior design, an abandoned baby, and a knight in rusted armor fighting for love. At every turn, Pericles confronts events both grotesque and miraculous as his long and brilliant history unfolds. It is one of Shakespeare’s strangest plays and includes adult themes and situations.

Comments Melissa Chalsma, “This curious collaboration between Shakespeare and George Wilkins (an aspiring writer and brothel keeper) was born of mutual opportunism: Shakespeare was grappling with the new popular demands for ‘city comedies’ full of topical issues and scenes depicting frank portrayals of sexual situations, and Wilkins wanted literary respect. More

The Old Globe Announces Cast of PERICLES, PRINCE OF TYRE

26 Oct 2014 2 Comments

by Shakespeare in LA in San Diego Tags: ,

Pericles - Old GlobeThe Old Globe has announced the cast and creative team for the Old Globe/University of San Diego Graduate Theatre Program presentation of William Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre, directed by Ray Chambers, running Nov. 15 – 23. (Opening night is Saturday, Nov.15 at 8:00 pm.).

Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a startling epic of the trials, heartbreak, and redemption of a warrior who must navigate the dangerous currents of human corruption and angry fate. Join him as he travels across the treacherous oceans of North Africa, ancient Syria, Turkey, and Greece and is forever changed by the comically exotic and morally vague figures he meets. Love, betrayal, laughter, and adventure unfold in this engrossing, yet seldom produced, Shakespearean gem.  More

Review: The Perilous Adventures of Pericles, Prince of Tyre

19 Sep 2013 2 Comments

by Shakespeare in LA in Los Angeles, Reviews Tags: ,

Pericles ANW

Thomas Tofel and Jules Willcox. Photos by Craig Schwartz

Cue the traveling music and pack up the suitcases, Prince Pericles is going on an adventure. But as Shakespeare’s protagonist will soon find out, this grand tour is not destined to be full of thrilling adventures. In the search for a bride he discovers unspeakable horror, flees for his life, and is subject to two disastrous storms at sea. Then, his wife dies in childbirth, he leaves his daughter to be raised by a woman who grows to hate her, and is told on his return that she too has died.

Welcome to the first of Shakespeare’s late romances, bridging the gap between his epic tragedies like King Lear and Macbeth, and forthcoming romances, Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale. Fantasy begins to take over the storytelling and suddenly Pericles turns into an experiment that is much more episodic in nature, less cohesive in tone, and quite a departure from what the author had explored earlier.  More

Pay What You Can Preview for A Noise Within’s Pericles on Sept 12

09 Sep 2013 Leave a comment

by Shakespeare in LA in Los Angeles Tags: ,

Pericles - A Noise Within

Deborah Strang (Gower) and the Chorus from Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Photo by Craig Schwartz

“Pay What You Can” tickets are available for A Noise Within’s production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre this Thursday September 12 at 7:30 PM. Tickets must be purchased in person, at the Box Office after 2:00 PM on the day of the performance. Cash only. Subject to availability. Pericles will officially open Saturday, Sept. 14 and run through November 24, 2013.

In its day, Pericles was one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays – stuffed full of all kinds of adventurous effects to satisfy his audience: pirates, storms, kidnapping, brothels, prostitution, incest, murder plots complete with assassins, famine (resolved by lots of ears of corn), battles, broken engagements, burning to death by fire from heaven, bodies tossed overboard (only to be discovered alive when they wash up on shore), unlikely reunions, the appearance of an actual goddess, and of course, a virgin.

Producing Artistic Director Geoff Elliott says, “It is really the Elizabethan era’s idea of what we know today as a smash-hit summer movie – a play of spectacle and wonder. It was their Pirates of the Caribbean, filled with spectacular stage effects including two, count ‘em, two shipwrecks.”

Considered a romance, the story begins when Pericles must answer a riddle, placed before him by King Antiochus, to win the hand of a princess. He quickly surmises that all answers present their own perils, so he chooses another solution – to go on a long ocean voyage. Like Homer’s The Odyssey, Pericles presents a hero triumphing over his travails, as well as symbolic figures that transcend time periods and cultures. For more information visit www.anoisewithin.org.

A Noise Within Announces Cast of PERICLES

08 Aug 2013 Leave a comment

by Shakespeare in LA in Los Angeles, Uncategorized Tags: ,

A Noise Within

A Noise Within begins its 22nd season with Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre, opening Saturday, September 14 and closing Sunday, November 24, 2013, with previews starting September 7.

Pericles is an action-packed, tempest-tossed hero’s quest: a magical mystery tour spanning decades and continents. In its day, it was one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays – stuffed full of all kinds of adventurous effects to satisfy his audience: pirates, storms, kidnapping, brothels, prostitution, incest, murder plots complete with assassins, famine (resolved by lots of ears of corn), battles, broken engagements, burning to death by fire from heaven, bodies tossed overboard (only to be discovered alive when they wash up on shore), unlikely reunions, the appearance of an actual goddess, and of course, a virgin.

Scholars have debated whether Shakespeare wrote the whole play or adapted and extended a play by another playwright – with his language and style being seen most strongly in the last three acts. Pericles also shares a dreamlike, fantastical, and cinematic quality with The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, and his other late plays.  More

Pericles and Macbeth to be part of A Noise Within’s 2013-14 Season

17 Jul 2013 Leave a comment

by Shakespeare in LA in Los Angeles Tags: , ,

Lost and Found ANW

Single tickets are now on sale for A Noise Within’s Fall 2013 season. This season the plays are thematically tied by the tireless search to find that which has been lost. Julia Rodriguez Elliott said, “Much of life is about managing loss – and the search to find what we perceive we have lost: the longing for spent youth, the sadness for the unyielding search for a lost child. Sometimes it is re-discovery – the thrill of a romance, a self-deception of great entitlement, or finding a key to a locked mind. We’ve chosen these stories because they all explore values we find precious – love lost, love found, meaning lost and meaning found.”

The 2013-2014 schedule includes:

Pericles (Sept. 7 – Nov. 24, 2013)
By William Shakespeare, Directed by Julia Rodriguez-Elliot
This romantic fairy-tale is an action-packed, tempest-tossed hero’s quest: a magical mystery tour spanning decades and continents.  More