Valley Shakespeare Festival, the Valley’s only non-profit free Shakespeare theater company, will open its third season at 2 p.m. Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14 at Derby Neck Library, 307 Hawthorne Ave., Derby, with a scripted reading of Romeo and Juliet.
Shakespeare’s tragic tale of young love which has so often been performed in so many different formats, time periods and places will be presented by Valley Shakespeare as an adapted, script-in-hand reading, using only seven actors, minimal staging and will last approximately 90 minutes.
The performance is being presented free of charge, with a suggested donation of $10.
The season continues at 7 p.m. March 12 with the third offering in VSF’s Shakespeare in the Barseries, Hamlet: The Bad Quarto.
This version of the “melancholy Dane” is widely accepted as being the first draft of the Bard’s tragedy and will be presented in a brisk 90 minutes as adapted by Valley Shakespeare Festival’s executive and artistic director, Tom Simonetti.
As in the past, this script-in-hand adaptation will be performed in the intimate upper-level bar area of Porky’s Café at 50 Center St., Shelton.
Tickets for this event will be offered at $10 per person in advance, $15 at the door.
Valley Shakespeare Festival members are proud and excited to be piloting its Education Initiative Program this year to the fourth graders of the Shelton School District during the month of May.
It will conduct workshops on Shakespeare’s works and present performances of As You Like It to students and faculty during school hours in a format consistent with common core standards.
It is the hope of Valley Shakespeare Festival that the program will be received with great success and will be expanded to all grades and schools in the Valley in the very near future.
'A Midsummer Night's Dream'
The apex of Valley Shakespeare Festival’s season is always its grand summer production. This year the company is proud to be expanding its usual three free performances in Shelton’s Veterans Memorial Park to four performances, to be held July 9-12 at 8 p.m.
The production to be presented is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a perennial favorite for Shakespeare summer outdoor theater.
Puck and company will have audience members alternately laughing and weeping as they romp through the forest under the moonlight in this funny and poignant comedy.
Valley Shakespeare Festival also will be adding another Shakespeare in the Bar adaption in October, and will reprise its annual scripted reading of A Christmas Carol in December.
Information, reservations and tickets for all of Valley Shakespeare Festival’s events may be accessed at www.vsfestival.org or by calling 203-513-9446.
And make sure to follow them on Facebook and Twitter.
This is a press release from Valley Shakespeare Festival, a non-profit theater company, fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas, dedicated to providing free theater to the communities of the Lower Naugatuck Valley.
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