The lineup has been announced for Red Bull Theater's 20th Anniversary Festival—a series of workshops and readings of Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and more—set for April 15-May 13 at The Sheen Center on 18 Bleecker Street.
Celebrating 20 years of bringing rarely-seen classic plays to new life, the Festival will launch April 15 with the New York premiere of How Shakespeare Saved My Life, an epic poem told by Jacob Ming-Trent with verse, rhyme, and song.
An in-person workshop of Shakespeare's Macbeth, with Chukwudi Iwuji in the title role, will be presented April 20-21. The cast will also feature Jason Bowen, Jason C. Brown, Jason O’Connell, Derek Smith, Zuzanna Szadkowski, Raphael Nash Thompson, and Ayana Workman.
On April 23, Festival participants can enjoy the New York premiere of Bill Cain's God’s Spies. Nathan Winkelstein will direct the play, which follows Shakespeare as he tries to write his latest play while quarantined with a young Puritan lawyer and a mature streetwise prostitute. Matthew Rauch will star.
Aphra Behn's The Rover, directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch, will be presented April 26-27 with a cast that includes Kelley Curran, Darryl Gene Daughtry Jr., Zachary Fine, Tony winner Santino Fontana, and Ismenia Mendes. The comedy follows two Spanish sisters, who don masks and take to the streets of Spain, one to reunite with her true love, the other to find a man and evade her fate at the nunnery.
Jesse Berger will direct William Shakespeare's The Tempest April 29. Patrick Page will lead a cast that also includes Jason Bowen, Reeve Carney, Robert Cuccioli, Howard Overshown, Jacob Ming-Trent, Carson Elrod, Anthony Michael Martinez, Lily Santiago, Derek Smith, and Myra Lucretia Taylor.
Rebecca Hall will head the cast of Liz Duffy Adams' Or, What She Will, directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch, May 6, and Patrick Page will take on the title role of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, directed by Jesse Berger, May 10-11 for an in-person workshop. The company of the latter will also include Teagle F. Bougere, Derek Smith, and John Douglas Thompson.
Red Bull Theater will celebrate Mother’s Day weekend with a double dose of the most infamous mother of them all, Medea. Euripides’ Medea, in a new version by Ben Power, starring Elizabeth Marvel, will be presented May 12. And, May 13 Tom Hewitt will offer his solo show, Another Medea, written and directed by Aaron Mark.
Additional Festival events will include two Person Place Thing, live, in-person podcast recordings hosted by Randy Cohen: Santino Fontana on April 18 and Patrick Page on May 8 at Sheen Center Shiner Theatre.
“I am thrilled to invite audiences to our 20th Anniversary Festival, celebrating Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and more! This spring, we will do a deep dive into the work at the heart of our mission, sharing a plethora of classics, new works in conversation with those classics, and other special events featuring some of the most remarkable talent in the world,” said Red Bull Founder and Artistic Director Jesse Berger in a statement. “It is truly exciting and meaningful to be able to look back on 20 years of sharing our work with the fantastic artists and supporters of artists that make up our community here in New York. I couldn’t be more grateful to all the people who have contributed to make our company a unique and valued Off-Broadway institution, and all of us at Red Bull are proud to bring so many of this artistic family together for one fabulous Festival of performances in April and May. Join us as we celebrate two decades of sharing great classic stories, and sow the seeds for the next 20 years!”
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