Shakespeare Theatre Company has announced the lineup of its upcoming 2025/26 season, celebrating the company’s 40th season exploring classic storytelling in Washington, DC. The season features two Shakespeares, including Othello, which will be directed by STC Artistic Director Simon Godwin and feature Wendell Pierce (Elsbeth, The Wire) in the title role.
“I’m delighted to be celebrating STC’s 40th anniversary season,” said Godwin. “It’s a season focused on joy, truth, and redemption — all powerfully contemporary ideas.”
The season starts in Harman Hall with Merry Wives, reimagined by Jocelyn Bioh, who transports Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff, Mistress Quickly, and more, into a vibrant South Harlem community of West African immigrants. Visionary and award-winning director Taylor Reynolds makes her STC debut with Merry Wives, following sold-out shows in DC at Studio and Signature Theatres.
“This adaptation beautifully mixes Shakespeare’s language with modern language,” said Reynolds. “I look forward to finding the balance between Shakespeare and Jocelyn’s worlds. Both have such a gift for humor. I always find strength and hope in laughter, and Merry Wives has both woven into every movement. I hope DC audiences are ready for joy to explode from the stage into their hearts.”
Merry Wives will be followed by The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen, a playwright whose powerful words have not appeared on an STC stage in nearly a decade, adapted by David Eldridge. Directed by Simon Godwin in the Klein Theatre, Ibsen’s examination of family secrets and the elusive value of truth is ripe for re-examination and is produced in association with Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA). This production marks the fifth production of Ibsen at STC, making him the most produced playwright at the theater after Shakespeare.
For the holiday season, Harman Hall will be bursting with song and dance when Washington National Opera Artistic Director Francesca Zambello makes her STC debut directing Guys and Dolls. The crowd-pleasing Tony Award-winning musical centers on lovable degenerates Nathan Detroit and Sky Masterson, whose souls may yet be saved by the likes of one Sarah Brown. Zambello will be joined by choreographer Joshua Bergasse (Smash, Broadway’s Bull Durham)
“I’m thrilled to collaborate with the STC on directing Guys and Dolls,” said Zambello. “It is a joy to tell a story of redemption, with one classic, memorable American song after another, plus non-stop dancing, raucous comedy — all infused with the holiday spirit.”
In the new year, the writings of Samuel Beckett will be dissected and performed by the preposterously charismatic Bill Irwin in his funny and insightful one-man show On Beckett. Irwin (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Eureka Day, Sesame Street) is a Tony Award-winning actor and master clown who has spent a lifetime captivated by Beckett. His one-man-show is a nonstop display of “pure, energizing joy” (The New York Times).
Harman Hall will then have back-to-back explorations of Shakespeare. First, from the Royal Shakespeare Company, in its first time at STC, comes the U.S. premiere of Hamnet, an “elegant and beguiling” (Evening Standard) staging of the beloved best-selling novel by Maggie O’Farrell. Hamnet is adapted by award-winning playwright Lolita Chakrabarti (Life of Pi, Red Velvet) and directed by Erica Whyman. The story explores the romance and marriage of Agnes and William, their family, and the tragic loss that inspired one of the greatest plays ever written.
“Hamnet is about redemption and art. About love, children, and the complexities and joys of family life,” said Chakrabarti. “It’s about tragedy, grief, and loss, and how we navigate our way through unbearable circumstances. It’s a personal examination of the Shakespeares, and I hope you’ll come and meet them.”
Closing the season, Godwin returns to the director’s seat with Othello with the Olivier and Tony Award-nominee Wendell Pierce (Death of a Salesman, Elsbeth, The Wire).
“Wendell is a performer of vast talents that I have longed to work with for years,” said Godwin. “It will be an exhilarating adventure to collaborate with him on this, one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies.”
Pierce shared Godwin’s enthusiasm. “I am so excited to join next season at STC, to portray one of the great challenges in the canon, the role of Othello,” said Pierce. “I look forward to working with Simon, a wonderful director and Artistic Director, on this production.”
Full season subscriptions are now on sale through the STC Box Office and website at ShakespeareTheatre.org.
THE 2025/26 SEASON
Merry Wives
By William Shakespeare
Adapted by Jocelyn Bioh
Directed by Taylor Reynolds
SEP 9 – OCT 5
Harman Hall
William Shakespeare’s farce gets a joyful spin from Jocelyn Bioh (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding), dropping the debaucherous Falstaff into the melting pot of modern Harlem. Short on cash, Falstaff pursues the purses of two sharp-witted West African wives. As their proud husbands’ suspicions rise, the wives cook up a scheme to shame the would-be homewrecker and prove that “wives may be merry, and yet honest too” in this “spirited, sharp, and silly” (Variety) celebration. Taylor Reynolds (Fat Ham) makes her STC directorial debut in the play’s regional premiere.
The Wild Duck
By Henrik Ibsen
Adapted by David Eldridge
Directed by Simon Godwin
OCT 18 – NOV 16
Klein Theatre
Produced in Association with Theatre for a New Audience
The eccentric son of a wealthy businessman wreaks havoc when he embarks on a crusade to unveil the false foundations of his friend’s life. Ignorant of the adults’ machinations, a young girl tries to shield a fragile creature from the hurts of the world. Artistic Director Simon Godwin (Macbeth) directs Henrik Ibsen‘s unflinching tale about truth’s tragic toll in a timeless story “that explains why Ibsen is the greatest dramatist after Shakespeare” (The Guardian).
Guys and Dolls
Based on a Story and Characters of Damon Runyon
Music and Lyrics by Frank Loesser
Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows
Choreographed by Joshua Bergasse
Directed by Francesca Zambello
DEC 2 – JAN 4
Harman Hall
The oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York just got busted and Nathan Detroit needs cold hard cash to get it up and running again. Enter high-roller Sky Masterson, who Nathan wagers can’t get a date with the straightlaced Sarah Brown, a Salvation Army missionary trying to save them all from sin. Directed by Washington National Opera Artistic Director Francesca Zambello and choreographed by Joshua Bergasse (Smash, Broadway’s Bull Durham), dance the night away to “Luck Be a Lady Tonight,” “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,” “A Bushel and a Peck,” and more classic tunes in the must-see show of the holiday season.
On Beckett
Conceived and performed by Bill Irwin
An Irish Repertory Theatre Production, Produced in association with Octopus Theatricals
FEB 11 – MAR 8
Klein Theatre
Tony Award-winning actor and master clown Bill Irwin (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Sesame Street) has spent a lifetime captivated by Samuel Beckett. With little more than a funny hat and a podium, Irwin mines the comedy and tragedy of Beckett’s work—including Waiting for Godot, Texts for Nothing, and more—in a nonstop display of jovial verbal and physical comedy that has become Irwin’s signature. Whether you’re encountering the Nobel Prize winner’s writings for the first time or building on a body of Beckett knowledge, the “pure, energizing joy” (The New York Times) of Irwin’s dynamic showcase is not to be missed.
The Royal Shakespeare Company and Neal Street Productions
Present
Maggie O’Farrell’s
Hamnet
Adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti
Directed by Erica Whyman
MAR 17 – APR 12
Harman Hall
When the plague steals 11-year-old Hamnet from his loving parents, Agnes and William, they must each confront their loss alone. And yet, out of the greatest suffering, something of extraordinary wonder is born. Experience the U.S. premiere of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “sweeping and sentimental” (The Guardian) stage adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling novel, adapted by award-winning playwright Lolita Chakrabarti (Life of Pi) and directed by Erica Whyman.
Wendell Pierce in
Othello
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Simon Godwin
MAY 19 – JUN 21
Harman Hall
Simon Godwin directs Wendell Pierce (Elsbeth, The Wire) in Shakespeare’s towering tragedy about the power of words to kill. Venice is scandalized when its protector, Othello (Pierce), elopes with a nobleman’s daughter, while his most trusted lieutenant, Iago, seethes after being passed over for a promotion. Vengeful Iago speaks a word and contorts the world: transforming Othello’s faithful wife into an adulteress and upright men into beasts.
SEASON ARTISTS
JOSHUA BERGASSE
Choreographer, Guys and Dolls
Josh won an Emmy Award for choreographing the NBC series Smash, which is coming to Broadway this spring. Other Broadway: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; On the Town (TONY, Drama Desk, OCC noms; Astaire Award); and Gigi. Off-B’way: Sweet Charity (Chita Rivera Award, Lortel nom); Cagney (Drama Desk, OCC, Astaire Noms; Callaway Finalist); Bomb-itty of Errors; and Captain Louie. He also directed and choreographed the re-imagined Smokey Joes Cafe at Stage 42. Josh has done nearly a dozen productions of West Side Story (recreating the original Jerome Robbins choreography). Encores!: I married an Angel; Little Me; …It’s Superman!; Annie Get Your Gun; and The Golden Apple. For Television: Multiple Episodes of So You Think You Can Dance; A Capitol Fourth; Jessica Jones; Sinatra – A Voice for a Century; Hawkeye; Kennedy Center 50-year celebration; Monsterland. Film: Your Monster.
JOCELYN BIOH
Adaptation, Merry Wives
NEW YORK: Broadway: Jaja’s African Hair Braiding (5 TONY Award nominations including Best Play); Off-Broadway: Public Theater/Shakespeare in the Park: Merry Wives; MCC Theater: Nollywood Dreams, School Girls: Or, The African Mean Girls Play. INTERNATIONAL: Lyric Hammersmith (London): School Girls: Or, The African Mean Girls Play. TV: Russian Doll, She’s Gotta Have It (Netflix), Tiny Beautiful Things (Hulu), The Acolyte (Disney+). AWARDS: Horton Foote Prize (2024), The Steinberg Playwright Award (2020), The Dramatist Guild Hull-Warriner Award (2018 and 2024), Lortel Award (2018), Drama Desk Award (2022), and was a 2017 Tow Playwriting Fellow. Jocelyn is also writing the live screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Once on This Island for Disney.
LOLITA CHAKRABARTI
Adaptation, Hamnet
Lolita Chakrabarti OBE is an actress and award-winning playwright. She trained at RADA. Writing credits include her adaptation of the Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi, which won 5 Olivier Awards, including Best Play, and went to Broadway in March 2023, winning 3 Tony Awards. Hamnet opened for a sold-out run at the RSC, before transferring to London’s West End. Her original play Hymn opened at the Almeida Theatre in 2021 and will have its US Premiere at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre in Spring 2025. Her debut play Red Velvet opened at the Tricycle Theatre, London, before transferring to St Ann’s Warehouse in New York and to London’s West End. It earned her the Evening Standard Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright 2012; The Critics’ Circle Award for Most Promising Playwright 2013; AWA for Arts and Culture 2013 and an Olivier Award nomination 2012. Lolita adapted Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities for Manchester International Festival and Brisbane Festival, in collaboration with Rambert, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and 59 Productions. Lolita curated The Greatest Wealth (Old Vic), commissioning eight new monologues to celebrate the NHS. She also dramaturged Sylvia (Old Vic) and Message in a Bottle (Peacock Theatre/US tour) for Kate Prince. Her extensive acting credits include Summer 1954 (Theater Royal Bath and UK tour), The Hunt (Almeida at St Ann’s Warehouse), Gertrude, opposite Tom Hiddleston, in Sir Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (RADA), Last Seen – Joy (Almeida Theatre), which she also wrote, Silo (Apple TV), Screw (CH4), Vigil, Showtrial, A Casual Vacancy (BBC), Wheel of Time (Amazon), Criminal (Netflix), Delicious (Sky), Forty Something, and The Bill (ITV).
DAVID ELDRIDGE
Adaptation, The Wild Duck
NEW YORK: Broadway: Festen (Music Box Theatre). INTERNATIONAL: Beginning, Middle, End, Market Boy (National Theatre); Holy Warriors (Shakespeare’s Globe); In Basildon, Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness (Royal Court); Under the Blue Sky (Royal Court & Duke of York’s Theatre, West End); The Stock Da’wa, Falling (Hampstead Theatre); The Knot of the Heart (Almeida Theatre); Summer Begins (Donmar Warehouse). ADAPTATIONS: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Chichester Festival Theatre); Miss Julie, The Lady from the Sea (Royal Exchange, Manchester); John Gabriel Borkman, The Wild Duck (Donmar Warehouse); Festen (Almeida, Lyric Theatre West End). TV: The Scandalous Lady W (BBC2), Our Hidden Lives and Killers (BBC4). AWARDS: Time Out Live Award for Best New Play in West End; Theatregoers Choice Award for Best New Play; Prix Europa for Best European Radio Drama; Off West End Theatre Award for Best New Play.
SIMON GODWIN
Director, The Wild Duck, Othello
Artistic Director, Shakespeare Theatre Company
STC: Uncle Vanya, All the Devils are Here: How Shakespeare Created the Villian, Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, Timon of Athens; Simon Godwin joined Shakespeare Theatre Company as Artistic Director in September 2019. He has served as Associate Director of National Theatre of London, Royal Court Theatre, Bristol Old Vic, and Royal & Derngate Theatre. INTERNATIONAL: UK: His work at the National Theatre includes Man and Superman (ft. Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma), Antony and Cleopatra (ft. Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo), Romeo & Juliet (ft. Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley and filmed for Sky Arts/PBS) | Work at Royal Shakespeare Company includes Hamlet, Timon of Athens (ft. Kathryn Hunter and reimagined in 2020 for Theatre for a New Audience and STC). AWARDS: Evening Standard/Burberry Award for an Emerging Director (2012).
BILL IRWIN
Creator, Director, Performer, On Beckett
Bill Irwin is a Tony Award-winning actor, director, writer, and clown. Original works include The Regard of Flight; Largely New York (Four Tony Nominations); Fool Moon; Old Hats, The Happiness Lecture; and others. He has played in many Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regional stage productions, including, ON BECKETT, The Iceman Cometh, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play), The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?; Waiting For Godot (2009 for a Drama Desk Award nomination); Endgame; The Tempest; Texts for Nothing; Garden of Earthly Delights; Accidental Death of An Anarchist; Showboat – and the Tony Award winning Fool Moon, which he created with David Shiner and Nancy Harrington. On television, Irwin appears as Mr. Noodle of Elmo’s World and Carey Loudermilk of LEGION. The Regard of Flight (PBS) he created with Doug Skinner, Michael O’Connor, and Nancy Harrington. Film credits include Rachel Getting Married, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Eight Men Out, Interstellar, Stepping Out, Unsilent Picture, and more. Irwin was an original member of Kraken, a theatre company directed by Herbert Blau, and was also an original member of the Pickle Family Circus of San Francisco with Larry Pisoni and Geoff Hoyle. Irwin is the grateful recipient of MacArthur, Guggenheim, Fulbright, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.
MAGGIE O’FARRELL
Author, Hamnet, novel
Maggie O’Farrell is an author and screenwriter. Maggie has co-written the screenplay adaptation of her novel Hamnet (with Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao) for Hera/Neal St/Amblin Entertainment, Focus, which filmed in July 2024 starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, directed by Chloe Zhao. Hamnet was the winner of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Maggie’s novels include The Marriage Portrait under option to Element Pictures, The Hand That First Held Mine, which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award and is under option to Estuary Films, and This Must be the Place, shortlisted for the 2016 Costa Novel Award and will be produced as a TV series for Amazon, starring Orlando Bloom. The Distance Between Us won a Somerset Maugham Award; The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox was shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Novel Award, and Instructions for a Heatwave was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award. Her memoir I am, I am, I am became a Sunday Times no 1 bestseller. Maggie’s titles have sold over 4 million copies in the UK and Ireland and over 7 million worldwide, and have been translated into 42 languages.
WENDELL PIERCE
Actor, Othello
Wendell Pierce is a prolific award-winning actor with a body of work on stage, television and film that spans more than three decades. He currently portrays Captain C.W. Wagner in the second season of the critically acclaimed CBS drama Elsbeth, for which he received an AAFCA TV Honor and a Critics Choice Celebration of Black Cinema and Television Actor Award. He is also a recurring character, Ishmael “Snaps” Henry, on Starz’s Power Universe’s Raising Kanan. Universally hailed for his portrayal of Det. Bunk Moreland on HBO’s groundbreaking series The Wire, Pierce was also praised for his starring role as Antoine Baptiste on David Simon’s critically acclaimed series Tremé and as James Greer in the Amazon Originals Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan alongside John Krasinski. This summer, he joins both the Marvel Universe in the feature film Thunderbolts and the DC Comics Universe in James Gunn’s Superman. Pierce returned to Broadway in 2022 for a limited engagement to reprise his portrayal of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, for which he received a Tony Award nomination for Lead Actor in a Play.
TAYLOR REYNOLDS
Director, Merry Wives
Taylor Reynolds is an OBIE-award winning director based in New York, originally from Chicago. Her work centers around joyful collaboration and new play development. Selected directing credits: Primary Trust (Signature Theatre), The Sensational Sea Mink-ettes (Woolly Mammoth), Fat Ham (Studio Theatre, Helen Hayes nomination for Best Director), This Land Was Made (Vineyard Theatre), Clyde’s (Berkeley Rep/Huntington Theatre), La Race (Page 73/Working Theater), Tambo & Bones (Playwrights Horizons/CTG), Man Cave (Page 73), The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, New York Times Critic’s Pick), Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally (Baltimore Center Stage/Playwrights Realm), and Plano (Clubbed Thumb, Drama Desk nomination for Best Director). Taylor has also worked as a director and collaborator with companies including The Movement Theatre Company, Keen Company, Ojai Playwrights Conference, MCC, EST, New Georges, and The 24 Hour Plays. She is a New Georges Affiliated Artist, 2021 LPTW Lucille Lortel Award recipient, 2017-2018 Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow, and Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab alum. BFA, Carnegie Mellon University. Member of SDC.
ERICA WHYMAN
Director, Hamnet
Erica Whyman is an experienced theatre director and artistic leader. Most recently she directed Ben and Imo by Mark Ravenhill for the RSC’s Swan theatre which she will revive in 2025 at the Orange Tree, London, and Hamnet by Lolita Chakrabarti from the novel by Maggie O’Farrell for the RSC and the West End. She has had a long career leading theaters – Southwark Playhouse, the Gate Theatre, London, and Northern Stage, Newcastle where she was awarded the OBE for services to British Theatre. From there she became Deputy and later Acting Artistic Director of the RSC. She was Chair of Theatre503 for a decade and is now Chair of Improbable. She has always championed theater makers whose voices have been ignored. Notable productions include Revolt she said, revolt again, by Alice Birch, The Museum in Baghdad by Hannah Khalil, Seven Acts of Mercy by Anders Lustgarten, Miss Littlewood by Sam Kenyon (all RSC) and Our Friends In The North by Peter Flannery (Northern Stage). She is currently a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, considering the role of culture in our democracy.
FRANCESCA ZAMBELLO
Director, Guys and Dolls
Francesca Zambello is the General Director, Emerita of the Glimmerglass Festival and the Artistic Director of the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center. She is also an internationally recognized director of opera and theater, Zambello’s work has been seen at major opera houses, festivals and theaters around the globe. She has been awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, the Knighthood of the Order of the Star of Italy for her contribution to Italian culture and the Russian Federation’s medal for Service to Culture. She was also given the San Francisco Opera Medal for Artistic Excellence for more than 30 years of artistic contributions to the company. Her theatrical honors include three Olivier Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, two French Grand Prix des Critiques, Helpmann Award, Green Room Award, and Russia’s Golden Mask.
SHAKESPEARE THEATRE COMPANY
For over 35 years, the Tony Award-winning Shakespeare Theatre Company has been recognized as the nation’s premier classical theater. STC tells vital stories in audacious forms, stories that are Shakespearean in the deepest sense, even if they are not written by Shakespeare. They stage epic stories in exhilarating style.
NEAL STREET PRODUCTIONS
Neal Street Productions is one of the UK’s most respected production companies, producing film, television and theater. Founded 2003 by Sam Mendes, Pippa Harris, and Caro Newling, it makes distinctive, popular award-winning projects on both sides of the Atlantic. The theatre slate is overseen by Newling together with producer Georgia Gati. TV includes Call the Midwife, The Franchise, Britannia, Penny Dreadful, and The Hollow Crown. Films include Mendes’ Empire of Light, 1917, and Revolutionary Road. Upcoming: The Magic Faraway Tree, Hamnet, and currently in development: The Beatles project for Sony Pictures – four distinct theatrical feature films about the greatest band in history, conceived and directed by Sam Mendes. Theater originated by Neal Street includes The Lehman Trilogy, The Motive and the Cue, The Hills of California, Hamnet, Local Hero, The Ferryman, Shrek the Musical, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Bridge Project 2010 – 2012, Three Days of Rain, The Vertical Hour. West End transfers also include Walking with Ghosts, The Moderate Soprano, This House, The Painkiller, Merrily We Roll Along, South Downs/The Browning Version, Red, Enron, Sunday in the Park with George, Mary Stuart. In 2015 Neal Street moved under the umbrella of parent company AlIMedia, which is owned by RedBird IMI.
ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s mission is to bring people together to experience stories that deepen our understanding of ourselves, each other and the world around us, and that bring joy. Shakespeare’s restless exploration of all of human nature is RSC’s inspiration and touchstone. The Company’s roots lie in the bold vision of a local brewer, Edward Fordham Flower, who in 1879 established a theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon with his son Charles. The RSC as we know it today was formed by Sir Peter Hall, whose ambition was to produce new plays alongside those of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. They continue this today across their three permanent theaters in Stratford – the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the Swan Theatre and The Other Place – and online and around the globe. RSC believes everybody’s life can be enriched by culture and creativity. Their Creative Learning and Engagement programs reach over half a million young people and adults each year. They have collaborated with generations of the very best theater makers and we continue to nurture the talent of the future.
TFANA
Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, and led by Horowitz and Managing Director Dorothy Ryan, Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) is a New York home for Shakespeare and other contemporary playwrights. It nurtures artists, culture, and community.
With Shakespeare as its guide, TFANA explores the ever-changing forms of world theater. TFANA has produced thirty-five of Shakespeare’s thirty-eight play canon and builds a dialogue spanning centuries between the language and ideas of Shakespeare and diverse authors, past and present. TFANA is committed to building long-term associations with artists from around the world and supporting the development of plays, translations, and productions through residences, workshops, and commissions through the Merle Debuskey Studio Program. TFANA performs for an audience of all ages and backgrounds; and promotes a vibrant exchange of ideas through its humanities and education programs. TFANA is very happy to continue its co-producing collaboration with The Shakespeare Theatre Company. The Wild Duck marks the third co-production between TFANA and STC building on co-productions of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens featuring Kathryn Hunter, directed by Simon Godwin and The Merchant of Venice featuring John Douglas Thompson as Shylock and directed by Arin Arbus.
TFANA’s productions have played nationally, internationally, off and on Broadway. In 2001, TFANA became the first American theater company invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the Royal Shakespeare Company. TFANA has just partnered with Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre for The Shakespeare Exchange in a transatlantic partnership: In spring of 2024, TFANA presented the Lyceum’s Macbeth (an undoing). In January 2025, the Lyceum presented TFANA’s The Merchant of Venice.
TFANA is also committed to a civic role. It created and runs the largest in-depth program to introduce Shakespeare and classic drama in New York City’s public schools. Since its inception in 1984, the program has served more than 140,000 students. TFANA is committed to economic access. In addition to offering selected Pay What You Can Performances, its New Deal Ticket Initiative offers $20 tickets to those age 30 and under and full-time students of any age for all dates of all its productions.
In 2013, TFANA opened its first permanent home, Polonsky Shakespeare Center (PSC), in the Brooklyn Cultural District. The heart of PSC is its performance space: the 299-seat Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage, a uniquely flexible space capable of multiple configurations between stage and audience; as well as the 50-seat Theodore C. Rogers Studio.
TFANA honors the Lenape and Canarsie people, on whose ancestral homeland Polonsky Shakespeare Center is built.