Illinois Shakespeare Festival Returns with Mind-Boggling Array of Choices

The Illinois Shakespeare Festival sent out its season brochure this week, and there are some very new choices on the schedule under new artistic director Kevin Rich.

In addition to the usual Shakespeare mainstage shows performed during the summer at Ewing Manor -- Comedy of Errors runs from a special preview on July 5 to August 8 and Macbeth opens with its own preview on July 6, finishing up August 9 -- Illinois Shakes has added a brand-new option, Philip Dawkins' Failure: A Love Story, a "beautiful, whimsical, extraordinary" play about three sisters, the man who loves them each in turn, and an eccentric musical chorus, set in Chicago in 1928. Failure previews on July 11, followed by performances through August 10.

Ewing Manor

 But that's not the end of the surprises. For those three shows, ISF has also added a "flex" ticket option, so that you can buy an advance season pass (must be purchased before May 12, 2013) and then "spend" it on any performances you choose all season. And after last summer's heat wave, they're offering 1:30 pm matinee performances on Saturdays and Sunday, and moving them inside to the air-conditioned comfort of the Center for the Performing Arts on the ISU campus. That gives you the option of Macbeth during the afternoon of Saturday, July 20, Comedy of Errors on Sunday, July 28, or Failure on Sunday, July 21 and Saturday, July 27.

Other special projects include a staged reading of The Reign of King Edward III from the Shakespeare Project of Chicago, with ISF artistic director Kevin Rich reading the role of Edward. That's set for the CPA on Monday, April 22 at 5 pm as a kick-off for the new season and a celebration of Shakespeare's birthday, all in one.

The Improvised Shakespeare Company will offer just that -- improvised Shakespeariffic pieces made up on the fly -- on June 6 and 13 at Ewing Manor, and Lori Adams, will bring Shame the Devil, a one-woman show about 19th century Shakespearean actress Fanny Kemble, to Ewing Manor on July 1.

I feel like an informercial, but seriously, there's more! First, more improv with ISU's Improv Mafia and the Shakespeare Globetrotters Time to Make the Shakespeare, performed on the patio at Destihl Restaurant and Brew Works in Bloomington on Thursday nights in May and at Ewing Manor on Sunday evenings beginning July 14. Plus two new greenshows written especially for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival by local author Nancy Steele Brokaw. And a children's show called The Magical Mind of Billy Shakespeare, written by Kevin Rich, performed at 10 am on Wednesdays on the grounds at Ewing Manor starting May 29, with Saturday performances beginning June 1 split between Ewing,  Lincoln Park at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts and the Bloomington Farmers Market.

MooNiE

And there's more! MooNiE the Magnif'cent! Glenn Wilson and Friends! Adopt-a-Bard-Buddy! Costume tours! Puppet building! The John Stevens Memorial Golf Outing! Picnics with Two Blokes and a Bus and Kelly's Bakery!

Too many choices? Your mind spinning? Look out for the first event with Edward III on April 22, and then take it one step at a time through that last performance of Failure: A Love Story on August 10. And right now... Tickets are on sale. Call 866-IL-Shake or check out all the details at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival website.

Wondering What's Coming Up From Illinois Shakes Fest in Summer 2013?

Tonight was the night the Illinois Shakespeare Festival brought out the big red bus and gave us the news about what will be on stage when summer 2013 rolls around.

Back in September, I guessed Comedy of Errors, Hamlet and She Stoops to Conquer for the main season, and didn't hazard a choice for the Theatre for Young Audiences slot. This evening, at a special press conference held at Ewing Manor, the ISF and new artistic director Kevin Rich announced that the three mainstage plays will be Comedy of Errors, Macbeth and Failure: A Love Story, a "magical, musical fable" by Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins. The Theatre for Young Audiences choice is The Magical Mind of Billy Shakespeare, written by Rich himself.

All of that means I'm hitting .333. (It sounds better than 1-of-3, doesn't it?)

But, after all, the play's the thing. Or the plays are the thing. And in terms of plays, we'll be getting funny, silly, nothing-serious-about-it Comedy of Errors, the one with the identical twins separated at birth, wandering around not realizing everybody in town is mistaking one for the other, as well as Macbeth, Shakespeare's dark and scary journey into murder, madness, and ambition run wild.

You may remember Philip Dawkins as one of the authors invited down to Bloomington for a staged reading last summer as part of the "Midwestern Voices" Playwrights Festival. For that reading, Dawkins brought along Miss Marx, a new play about the daughter of Karl Marx. He is a resident playwright at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theatre and the author of "The Homosexuals," presented by About Face Theatre at Victory Gardens last year in a very well-received production. The Chicago Tribune's Chris Jones called the play, "ambitious, substantial and deeply impressive." "Failure: A Love Story," the one we'll see next summer, takes the stage at Victory Gardens beginning November 16.

The play is about the lives of the three Fail sisters (if there are sisters in theatre, they usually comes in threes*), siblings who have lived their lives in a "rickety two-story building by the Chicago River that was the Fail family home and clock shop."

Because the Shakes Fest has traditionally focused on Shakespeare or plays that dovetail nicely with Shakespeare, Failure is a departure from the usual fare. I'm looking forward to hearing why Rich chose this piece and seeing how it works with Comedy of Errors and Macbeth. The play itself sounds pretty cool. I'm a big fan of new work, so the idea that our Shakes Fest is adding a contemporary play is good news, I think. And the fact that it centers on three women, to balance out the heavily male Shakespeare canon, is a bonus.

I believe Rich's Billy Shakespeare is a play he's had success with previously, so it ought to be a good match for Young Audiences and outreach programs, too. 

Very intriguing, all around. To keep an eye on what's happening with the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, you can visit their Facebook page here.

* I have this dream to produce King Lear, Three Sisters and Crimes of the Heart in repertory, with the same actresses playing the sisters in all three of them. If Dawkins' play catches my fancy, maybe I will add it to my imaginary repertory!