Hudson Valley Shakespeare to Present Romeo & Juliet and Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play

Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (HVSF) has shared plans for its upcoming summer season, which will be held under its open-air tent on the grounds of its new home in Garrison, New York.

The first show of the season will be William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, which will tell the story of star-crossed love in an age-blind production by director Gaye Taylor Upchurch. Kurt Rhoads and Nance Williamson, neither of whom are teenagers or twentysomethings, will play the title roles.

The second production of the season will be Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, which imagines American society following the failure of the electrical grid. Shadowy memories of old episodes of The Simpsons, told by firelight, provide the foundation for a new theatrical tradition. The show features music by the late Michael Friedman at his most Brechtian. HVSF artistic director Davis McCallum directs.

HVSF will also present Madeline Sayet's Where We Belong in a joint production with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, in association with the Folger Shakespeare Library. This solo play following Sayet, a Mohegan theater-maker, who travels to England to study Shakespeare and uncovers the intertwined relationship between Shakespeare and colonialism. Mei Ann Teo directs.

As part of its "Tent Pole Commissions," HVSF will also present developmental workshops of Untitled Agatha Project by Heidi Armbruster (Ryan Quinn directs) and Memnon by Will Power (Carl Cofield directs).

A virtual production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream will also tour to regional middle and high schools beginning in April. Matthew Saldivar directs this 60-minute video production.

Exact dates and further casting will be announced later. Click here for more information on the 2022 summer season at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival.