CINCINNATI — The Cincinnati Shakespeare Company will celebrate its grand reopening after more than a year-long shutdown with a lineup of outstanding plays.
On Friday the company announced it will begin its 2021-22 season at the Otto M. Budig Theater starting with William Shakespeare’s "Romeo and Juliet," directed by Darnell Pierre Benjamin starting this October. Actors Courtney Lucien and Crystian Wiltshire will portray the star-crossed lovers in a traditional Elizabethan production of the play. Wiltshire also recently joined Cincinnati Shakespeare as its new associate artistic director.
Michael Carleton, James FitzGerald and John K. Alvarez will then delight audiences for their 15th holiday season with the production of "Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some!)." The play, which is full of irreverent pop-culture holiday humor, will begin performances in November.
The 2021-22 season will pick back up in the spring with a production of August Wilson's "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," directed by Candice Handy and featuring Torie Wiggins as Ma Rainey. The season will continue with productions of "Hamlet," "The Comedy of Errors" and end with a special production of "Pride and Prejudice."
“While the past 18 months were not what anyone at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company originally envisioned, it is certainly one we will never forget," said Brian Isaac Phillips, the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company's artistic director, in a press release. "As we moved through it with imagination, flexibility, tenacity and endurance, we were sustained by the hope that live theater would eventually return."
For more information about the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company's upcoming season and productions, visit cincyshakes.com.
