CSF announces 60th season lineup
CSF 60th season nods to the past and looks toward the future June 11-Aug. 13, 2017
(Above: Benjamin Bonenfant in 2015’s ‘Wittenberg.’ Photo by Jennifer Koskinen.)
Next summer, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival celebrates its 60th season with performances of the plays that started it all.
In a nod to the past, CSF’s Summer 2017 lineup will remount the plays audiences saw in its original 1958 season: The Taming of the Shrew, a laugh-out-loud audience favorite; Julius Caesar, a classic political thriller; and Hamlet, Shakespeare’s undisputed masterpiece.
The season also includes Tom Stoppard’s fresh, funny Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which retells Hamlet from the perspective of two minor characters, and two exclusive Original Practices performances of the rarely seen Henry VI, Part 3. At the end of the summer, CSF will have completed the Shakespeare canon for a second time.
“This particular season has been three years in the making,” says CSF Producing Artistic Director Timothy Orr. “Revisiting the original season of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival is not only a great way to look back across 60 incredible years of Shakespeare in Boulder, but it’s also a fantastic way to embark on the next 60 years.”
The 2017 season opens Sunday, June 11 and runs through Aug. 13. Season tickets are available beginning Oct. 31, 2016 at 10 a.m. online at coloradoshakes.org, over the phone at 303-492-8008 and in person at the CU Presents box office, 972 Broadway, Boulder. The box office is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and is located in the University Club building on the CU Boulder campus.
The 2017 season will feature several notable milestones:
- Each cast member of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Hamlet will play the same role in both productions. Audiences who want to compare and contrast the two plays will have a few chances to see both productions in the same day on the indoor stage.
- Next summer’s production of Hamlet will be CSF’s ninth since 1958, but it will be the first production mounted indoors on the University Theatre stage. Says Orr, “We want to see this piece done close, in an intimate space, as the riveting chamber piece it was intended to be.”
- Henry VI, Part 3 was last produced at CSF in 1969. After the 2017 performance, CSF will have completed the 37-play canon of Shakespeare’s work for a second time.
- Next summer features the CSF directing debuts of Christopher DuVal and Anthony Powell. DuVal is a 16-year veteran of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, an experienced fight choreographer and an assistant professor at the University of Utah; Powell, a well-known Colorado creative mind, is the artistic director of the Boulder-based Stories on Stage and has directed productions at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.