American Shakespeare Center begins its 2022 summer season with a heartwarming show that explores the things that make life worth living.
The story of a 7-year-old child coping as his family encounters struggles engages the audience in a compact of empathy and joy. Critics hail this meaningful play, calling it “poignant, uplifting, offbeat and heartwarming” (DCMetroTheaterArts.com), “candid and compassionate – an ode to life’s joys” (The Guardian, UK), and “really beautiful, kind and loving. It says to the audience, take a look at all the stuff you worry about and instead appreciate the pleasures of being alive” (Chicago Tribune).
American Shakespeare Center’s Summer 2022 season also includes:
Twelfth Night, June 9-Aug. 6
Sea-tossed siblings set out for adventure in this laugh-out-loud look at gender, love and longing. One of Shakespeare’s most joyous rom-coms, Twelfth Night weaves a tangled web of love: Viola is in love with Orsino…who is in love with Olivia…who is in love with Cesario…who is secretly Viola disguised as a man. Jenny Bennett directs this summer frolic.
Thrive, Or What You Will, by L M Feldman, July 7-Aug. 7
In this epic tale about the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, gender-nonconforming 18th-century herb woman Jeanne Baret sets out on an 11-year voyage across lands and seas. A funny, gripping, and inventive theatrical journey, Thrive sparks a cross-centuries conversation with Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night about exploration, love, and identity. Performed in rep by the company of Twelfth Night and directed by Larissa Lury. Thrive was recently short-listed for the Lambda Literary Prize for LGBTQ Drama. Larissa Lury will direct the ASC production. Thrive was selected as the 2020 winner of ASC’s Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries project, which seeks to discover, develop, and produce new works that are inspired by or in conversation with each of the plays in Shakespeare’s canon.
Running in repertory, both Twelfth Night and Thrive, Or What You Will features the same cast of six actors, each taking multiple roles, in keeping with Shakespearean staging practices: Jasmine Eileen Coles, Annie Fang, Jihan Haddad, Marcel Mascaro, Meg Rodgers and Eli Lynn.
Pass Over, by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, Aug. 12-28
This groundbreaking drama thrilled audiences on Broadway in summer 2021, drawing rave reviews; The New York Times called Pass Over “blazingly theatrical and thrillingly tense,” and Variety praised the play, calling it “surreal and morbidly funny. Nwandu’s theatrical idiom — the heartsick poetry of profanity applied to the raging anger of deep existential pain — is its own kind of beautiful.” Pass Over crafts everyday profanities into poetic and humorous riffs, exposing the unquestionable human spirit of young Black men looking for a way out.
Tickets for Every Brilliant Thing, Twelfth Night, Thrive, Or What You Will, and Pass Over are on sale now at americanshakespearecenter.com or by calling 1.877.MUCH.ADO (1.877.682.4236).
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