Festival Season

Summer’s almost here, which means that theater festivals are cropping up all across the U.S. and Canada, often in choice vacation spots. You can see everything from Shakespeare to works by emerging playwrights or visiting artists from abroad. In New York City alone, there’s the Lincoln Center Festival, the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, the Fresh Fruit Festival, the Midtown International Theatre Festival, the Downtown Urban Theater Festival, the Moral Values Festival, and the New York International Fringe Festival, to name just a few. But if you’re looking to expand your theatrical horizons beyond the New York City area, here are some alternatives, listed in order of the festivals’ start dates:

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Oregon Shakespeare Festival (February 18-October 30)
Now in its 70th year, the OSF runs from February through the end of October, which admittedly stretches the definition of “summer festival.” This year, the Tony Award-winning company offers classical theater as well as two world premiere productions: By the Waters of Babylon, by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan (The Kentucky Cycle), directed by Bill Rauch; and Gibraltar, by San Francisco-based playwright Octavio Solis.

Stratford Festival (April 19-November 6)
While the picturesque town of Stratford, Ontario is not Shakespeare’s birthplace, its annual festival nevertheless offers high-quality stagings of the Bard’s works. This year, you can catch productions of The Tempest, As You Like It, and Measure for Measure, as well as non-Shakespearean fare ranging from Jean Anouilh’s The Lark (a dramatization of the Joan of Arc legend) to the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical Into the Woods.

The Shaw Festival (April 24-November 6)
Located in Ontario’s Niagara-on-the-Lake, this festival is presenting two works by George Bernard Shaw — You Never Can Tell and Major Barbara — along with an eclectic mix of works by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (Happy End), William Inge (Bus Stop), W. Somerset Maugham (The Constant Wife), Lillian Hellman (The Autumn Garden), and others.

Berkshire Theatre Festival (May 26-July 9)
The BTF started off with the musical I Do! I Do! on its Unicorn Stage and will open its Main Stage season on June 21 with Side By Side By Sondheim, the popular revue of songs from some of Stephen Sondheim’s best-known musicals. On tap later this summer are Peter Shaffer’s Equus, directed by Scott Schwartz; David Mamet’s American Buffalo; and a revised version of the recent NYC hit Souvenir, again starring Judy Kaye as the infamously tone-deaf singing sensation Florence Foster Jenkins. My Buddy Bill, one of the Unicorn offerings, chronicles Bill Cleveland’s encounters with President Bill Clinton, whom the author originally met while writing for ABC’s The West Wing.

Spoleto Festival USA (May 27-June 12)
Located in historic Charleston, SC, the Spoleto Festival is famous for cutting-edge theater, dance, and music events. This year’s theatrical offerings include Amajuba — Like Doves We Rise, in which five members of South Africa’s “lost generation” tell of growing up during the waning years of apartheid; Contemporary Legend Theatre of Taiwan’s Kingdom of Desire, a classic tale of political intrigue and betrayal transposed from the moors of Scotland to third-century B.C. China; and Mabou Mines DollHouse, a new take on Ibsen’s classic play by the award-winning director Lee Breuer.

Philadelphia Gay & Lesbian Theatre Festival (June 9-19)
This third annual festival spotlighting the gay and lesbian experience features the world premiere of the new musical Yank!, by brothers David and Joseph Zellnik, as well as Will & Grace‘s Leslie Jordan in his solo show Like a Dog on Linoleum.

International Festival of Arts and Ideas (June 10-July 25)
The 10th annual festival in New Haven, CT offers nearly 300 performances and other cultural events. Most notable is Constantinople by the internationally acclaimed composer Christos Hatzis, a music-as-theater work that premiered in Canada last year. Also pushing the boundaries is a unique Italy-U.K. collaboration titled Throat, an award-winning cascade of theater, banter, and circus from Company F.Z.

Potomac Theatre Festival (June 22-August 7)
This annual political theater festival is held on the Mainstage of the Olney Theatre Center for the Arts. It includes the Olney’s production of La Tragédie de Carmen (the adaptation of Bizet’s opera by Peter Brook, Jean-Claude Carriére, and Marius Constant). Also on tap are Snoo Wilson’s Lovesong of the Electric Bear, a play about Alan Turing, who famously cracked the Nazis’ Enigma code during World War II but was later ostracized for his homosexuality; Somewhere in the Pacific, which concerns sailors and marines sent to Japan during the final days of WW-II; and a double bill of Edward Albee’s The American Dream and Harold Pinter’s One for the Road.

An Appalacian Summer Festival (July 1-30)
North Carolina’s annual multi-arts celebration begins its third decade in the friendly small-town setting of Boone. You can enjoy the beautiful mountain scenery while taking in performances by Lily Tomlin, Garth Fagan Dance, and the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The festival will also host a lecture by distinguished playwright Romulus Linney, a seminar on the art of Appalacian narrative storytelling, and a reading of a new musical by New York City’s Melting Pot Theatre Company.

Williamstown Theater Festival (July 6-August 21)
Roger Rees took over the reigns as WTF’s artistic director this year. His first season there includes Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, directed by Moisés Kaufman; Top Girls, by Caryl Churchill; On the Razzle, by Tom Stoppard; and the William Inge classic Bus Stop. Three works by relatively unknown authors will be staged at WTF’s smaller Nikos Stage: Create Fate, by Etan Frankel; The Sugar Syndrome, by Lucy Prebble; and Tough Titty, by Oni Faida Lampley.

The Catskill Festival of New Theater (July 15-August 27)
The sixth season of this upstate New York festival features daring artists from across the U.S., Canada, and abroad. This year’s lineup includes the Obie Award-winning female acrobat troupe LAVA, Chicago’s Curious Theatre Branch, and an evening of solo performance by Serbia’s renowned DAH Teatar. Also scheduled is the world-premiere production of The Mystery of Lakewood House, a play by festival organizer NaCL (North American Cultural Laboratory) about the spirits — both real and imagined — that inhabit the artists’ residence next door to the theater.

Not enough? Check out the Minneapolis Fringe Festival, the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, the nEW Festival in Philadelphia, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Kitchen Dog Theater’s 2005 New Works Festival in Dallas, the Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival, and many more. No matter where you go this summer, there’s bound to be some exciting theatrical fare to choose from.