Abigail Bailey News

Kentucky Shakespeare announces the 2019 SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARKS tour. Their 6-actor, 90-minute production of MACBETH will tour to 28 parks in Louisville, Indiana, and other Kentucky cities this spring, bringing free Shakespeare to neighborhoods April 6-May 25, 2019.

Kentucky Shakespeare kicks off its 59th annual free Kentucky Shakespeare Festival in Central Park with a comedy, a history, and a tragedy. The season begins with their professional productions of As You Like It May 29th, then Henry IV, Part II June 13th, followed by King Lear on June 27th. July 9th-21st all three performances will be presented in repertory. The season will be dedicated to the late Bekki Jo Schneider, former Producer of Kentucky Shakespeare and founder Doug Ramey's immediate successor. Last year we lost our dear friend Bekki Jo. She was instrumental in helping make the company what it is today, not only during her tenure here as an actor and leader but for years after as a mentor to me and to so many others in our community. We dedicate this season to her as we celebrate her life and legacy, said Matt Wallace, Producing Artistic Director.

It's the last week to vote for the 2018 BroadwayWorld Louisville Awards, brought to you by BroadwayHD! Readers are already setting records as they vote for their favorites. Regional productions, touring shows, and more are all included in the awards, honoring productions which opened between October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018. Our local editors set the categories, our readers submitted their nominees, and now you get to vote for your favorites! Voting will continue through December 31st, 2018.

There's just two weeks left to vote for the 2018 BroadwayWorld Louisville Awards, brought to you by BroadwayHD! Readers are already setting records as they vote for their favorites. Regional productions, touring shows, and more are all included in the awards, honoring productions which opened between October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018. Our local editors set the categories, our readers submitted their nominees, and now you get to vote for your favorites! Voting will continue through December 31st, 2018.

There's just two weeks left to vote for the 2018 BroadwayWorld Louisville Awards, brought to you by BroadwayHD! Readers are already setting records as they vote for their favorites. Regional productions, touring shows, and more are all included in the awards, honoring productions which opened between October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018. Our local editors set the categories, our readers submitted their nominees, and now you get to vote for your favorites! Voting will continue through December 31st, 2018.

There's just one month left to vote for the 2018 BroadwayWorld Louisville Awards, brought to you by BroadwayHD! Readers are already setting records as they vote for their favorites. Regional productions, touring shows, and more are all included in the awards, honoring productions which opened between October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018. Our local editors set the categories, our readers submitted their nominees, and now you get to vote for your favorites! Voting will continue through December 31st, 2018.

There's just one month left to vote for the 2018 BroadwayWorld Louisville Awards, brought to you by BroadwayHD! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers are already setting records as they vote for their favorites. Regional productions, touring shows, and more are all included in the awards, honoring productions which opened between October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018. Our local editors set the categories, our readers submitted their nominees, and now you get to vote for your favorites! Voting will continue through December 31st, 2018.

On October 30, 1938, just before 8:00 pm, Americans gathered around the radio to listen to Mercury Theatre On The Air, an anthology series produced and hosted by Orson Welles. That evening's program, scripted by Howard Koch, was a modern-day adaptation of H.G. Well's The War of the Worlds, one of the first tales of alien invasion, in which Martians emerged from meteors to lay waste to all of the Earth's civilizations. Except that Koch, with help from producers John Houseman, Paul Stewart and Welles himself, structured the program to play, at least in the first moments, as special news bulletins interrupting a normal performance by a dance orchestra. The ruse seems thin even for the time, but Hitler had 'annexed' Austria a few months earlier, and was threatening to do more, so the program struck a chord and the resulting panic in the area in close proximity - Welles' Martians landed in a New Jersey pasture, sent East Coast residents scurrying across bridges and clogging highways.

Kentucky Shakespeare is announces the production of Orson Welles' radio drama of H.G. Wells' science fiction masterpiece The War of the Worlds. This 6-actor, 70-minute production will be performed live at the Louisville Public Media Performance Studio on select nights October 10-28, 2018.

What more pleasant way to spend a summer evening than outdoors in the heart of Old Louisville, surrounded by green space, with some of the loveliest turns of phrase ever written in the English language wafting on the breeze? Thanks to Kentucky Shakespeare and its supporters, we can do just that - free of charge - virtually all summer long in Louisville. What a treat, indeed!

Kentucky Shakespeare Festival opens a new summer season with laughs and gusto in The Comedy of Errors. A delightful romp at the C. Douglas Ramey Amphitheater in Central Park, the play serves up boundless humor in a manner comparable to a Bugs Bunny cartoon set in Greece. The rain did not hinder a single beat of the opening night performance and the modest audience was not disappointed. A comedy indeed, this production has everything: mistaken identities, sight gags, pratfalls, puns, and sexual innuendos. This show proves that Shakespeare knew what he was doing as he helped define comedic tropes and that the Festival in Central Park is back for a great season.

Kentucky Shakespeare kicks off its 58th annual free Kentucky Shakespeare Festival in Central Park with a comedy, a history, and a tragedy. The season begins with their professional productions of The Comedy of Errors on May 30th, then Henry IV, Part I on June 14th, followed by Othello on July 28th. Each production will run for two weeks, followed by all three productions in rotating repertory July 10th-22nd. An addition to this year's schedule are Bard-A-Thon Double Feature Saturdays. On July 14th A Comedy of Errors and Othello will be performed and Othello and Henry IV, Part I will be performed on July 21st.

Kentucky Shakespeare announces its newest program, SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT WORDS, serving immigrants and refugees in the Louisville Metro area.

This Royal Throne of KingsNeill Robertson is having a very good year. After a triumphant turn in Hedwig and the Angry Inch just one month ago, he here presents us with a Richard II that is nothing less than a lesson for us all.

Make 'Em Laugh

The 2017 57th annual Free Kentucky Shakespeare Festival in Central Park kicks off its professional season with a comedy, a history, and a tragedy.  The season begins with Much Ado About Nothing on May 31st, then Richard II on June 15th, followed by Julius Caesar on July 29h. Each production will run for two weeks and then all three productions will rotate in repertory July 11-23. All three productions will be performed in a single night starting at 4:30PM on July 22nd for the fourth annual Bard-A-Thon. 

Watching the current production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead from Kentucky Shakespeare was like seeing it for the first time, it's that fresh and smart. Tom Stoppard's post-modern masterpiece is absurdist and existential; catnip for academics in search of thesis projects concerning mid-Twentieth Century theatre, and director Amy Attaway's production is all of that, but also a deeply satisfying entertainment. You'll laugh a lot while you're in the theatre, and be thinking about the play long after you have left.

We used to look forward to the summer because it brought Kentucky Shakespeare to the C. Douglas Ramey stage in Central Park, but Producing Artistic Director Matt Wallace has expanded the life of the company to all four seasons. The formal announcement of the 2016-2017 season emphasizes this by actually coming close to the end of the run of its 'first' production.

One of Shakespeare's earliest plays. One of Shakespeare's bloodiest and goriest plays. One of Shakespeare's least frequently performed plays.

Kentucky Shakespeare presents The Winter's Tale