Royal Shakespeare Company Announces Five Plays for NYC in Summer 2011

Lincoln Center Festival and Royal Shakespeare Company announced yesterday that the RSC's 44-member acting ensemble will perform five Shakespeare plays at Park Avenue Armory as part of the Lincoln Center Festival, in association with The Ohio State University, next summer in New York City. The five plays are As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet , King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra and The Winter's Tale, and will be presented during a six-week engagement, July 6-Aug 14, 2011. The five plays will be performed on a specially built thrust-stage theatre -- named the Scarlet and Gray Stage for the event -- based on the RSC's newly transformed theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. (Above, Sam Troughton and Mariah Gale in Romeo and Juliet; photo: Ellie Kurttz)

The announcement appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

One New York performance will be exclusively assigned to Ohio State for "Scarlet and Gray Shakespeare" -- a national benefit gala -- on July 12, 2011 featuring the RSC's critically acclaimed Romeo and Juliet. For more details, see our website.

Notable News

This Thursday, Aug 5, Arts in the Alley comes alive from 6 to 9 pm with opening receptions for three new exhibitions, live music outdoors and free refreshments. In the Arts Initiative space, artists Nick Stull and Spencer Mustine present paintings in their show, HumanScapes: A Sense of Place (above). The Shoebox gallery hosts the ARTillery invitational, with works by Ron Abram, Aby Algueseva, Waylon Bigsby, Allison Buenger, Molly Burke, Sarah Fairchild, Brittany Ference, Giovani, Joey Monsoon, Beth Nash, Tristan Seeger, Kristin Patton and Elaine Quave. And the Ohio Art League gallery opens It's Complicated, with works by Clare Fox and Tara Polansky.

Shipwrecked, An Entertainment: The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont, by Donald Margulies, continues through Aug 15 at The Green Room, a new theatre venue at South Campus Gateway. The show, presented by Whistling in the Dark Theatre Company, is based on the true story of a shipwrecked British explorer in the late 1800s, whose adventures – along with his trusty dog Bruno – included high-seas tales of giant sea turtles, flying wombats, a man-eating octopus and Queen Victoria herself. With a focus on the power of storytelling, Shipwrecked runs Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2 pm. Tickets are available at the door or – at a discount – online here.

The Green Room is sponsored by the Arts Initiative at Ohio State and Campus Partners. The new space, a former storefront in the Arts in the Alley area that also houses three galleries, is the summer home to Whistling in the Dark, which is breaking ground by bringing "sustainable theatre" to Columbus. The company strives to be eco-friendly and cost efficient wherever possible.