Olympia Dukakis, Campbell Scott, et al. Set for Shakespeare & Company Studio Festival

The line-up has been announced for Shakespeare & Company’s 15th annual Studio Festival of Plays, which will kick off on August 31 at 7pm with a special benefit reading of William Bigelow’s new play, Leap Year, featuring Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis and directed by the Berkshire-based company’s artistic director, Tony Simotes.

The main part of the festival is a mini-marathon of works-in-progress and staged readings to be held in the Founders’ Theatre on Monday, September 7 beginning at 11:30 am and running through 11pm. Among the highlights will be Campbell Scott and Elizabeth Aspenlieder in a reading of Edward Albee’s The Goat, Or, Who Is Sylvia?, to be directed by Eric Tucker.

Additional programming will include The Dick and the Rose, written and directed by Robert Biggs, and featuring Caley Milliken, Ryan Winkles, Laurie Riffe and Barby Cardillo; Daniel Klein’sMengelberg and Mahler, directed by Kevin Coleman and featuring Robert Lohbauer; Lynne Kaufman’s Shooting Simone, directed by Daniel Gidron with the cast including Aspenlieder, Biggs, David Joseph and Annette Miller; comedian Doug Williams; Robert Skloot’s If the Whole Body Dies: Raphael Lemkin and the Treaty Against Genocide, directed by Anna Brownsted, featuring Jonathan Epstein, Elizabeth Raetz, Josh Aaron McCabe, Sonya Hamlin, and Danny Kurtz; Tina Howe’s Rembrandt’s Gift, directed by Simotes and featuring Miller, Epstein, and Nigel Gore; and Melinda R. Smith’s Alfred Returner, directed by Tina Packer, and featuring Jason Asprey, Susannah Millonzi, Julie Webster, and Jake Waid.

For more information, visit www.shakespeare.org.