Shakespeare at Winedale?s 2014 Summer Class takes the stage this summer with performances of The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and, for the first time at Winedale, Troilus and Cressida. The season will open on Thursday, July 17^th and run through Sunday, August 10^th. Performances are Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 7:30pm, with matinees on Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm. Tickets are $10 for general admission or $5 for students as well as UT faculty and staff, and may be ordered online through the Shakespeare at Winedale website, www.shakespeare-winedale.org.
 

The Shakespeare at Winedale program, housed in the College of Liberal Arts at UT, offers students a unique opportunity to explore Shakespeare?s rich and complex texts through the creative act of play. Established in 1970 as an undergraduate English course, Shakespeare at Winedale has grown into a year-round program reaching many different groups across the state and country.  Students in the summer program spend two months living in the Texas countryside, studying and performing three plays in the nineteenth-century barn that has been converted into an Elizabethan theatre.

This summer?s plays focus on love; from the first exciting days of courtship, to the trials of marriage, to devastating heartbreak, Shakespeare wrote about it all. Shakespeare at Winedale Director, James Loehlin says, ?The Taming of the Shrew, an early play, presents a boisterous and energetic account of wooing as an all-out 'battle of the sexes'; The Merry Wives of Windsor takes a more mature perspective on middle-aged couples, asserting that 'Wives may be merry, and yet honest too'; and Troilus and Cressida, from Shakespeare's tragic period, is a shrewd and complex look at love in the context of war.?

In addition to the regular summer performances, there will be number of special events at Winedale this season. Thursday, July 24^th, is our annual Fayette County Night. The performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor begins at 7:30pm and tickets for Fayette County residents are only $4. All attendees will be entered into a free raffle with door prizes given away after the performance.

On Sunday, July 27^th, the summer class will perform a staged reading of John Fletcher?s The Woman?s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed, a sequel to Shakespeare?s The Taming of the Shrew. In The Tamer Tamed, Kate the shrew has died and Petruchio is now married to the even more difficult Maria, who will stop at nothing to teach her husband a lesson. The reading will begin at 7:30pm. Tickets are $10 for general admission or $5 for students as well as UT faculty and Staff.

Our annual Season Finale is Saturday, August 9^th, beginning at 6:30pm with a special catered reception and special pre-show entertainment before the evening performance of The Taming of the Shrew; all tickets are $25.

After the students complete their work in residence, they will tour to Austin and Dallas, Texas, as well as the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia, home to the world?s only historical recreation of Shakespeare?s Blackfriars stage.