Stage Write

  When I was young, my parents and grandparents would occasionally take me to see a live performance. Sometimes it was a musical like Brigadoon or The King and I at Beef & Boards. At other times it was a show at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. From those early years, I loved seeing productions of all kinds. That passion grew when I studied abroad in London. Every chance I got, I made my way to the West End. I bought cheap tickets minutes before a show began and packed in dozens of performances by the end of my stay. When I began my career after college, I was working as a reporter at a daily newspaper. I realized that theatres provided free press tickets to their shows in the hopes that someone on staff would write a review. I immediately took up the post and began seeing at least one show a week. That was in August 2006, and it has been 20 years of plays, musicals, ballets, and operas since then. After the newspaper shut down, I moved my column online and continued Stage ...

  The finale of this year’s bard fest is Elizabeth Rex, a play based on the true story of the execution of the Earl of Essex, the Queen’s lover, for treason. This fictionalized account takes us into a barn holding Shakespeare and his players on the eve of the execution. They receive a visit from the Queen on this pivotal night in her rule. It’s a regional premiere production and an absolute coup for the Bard Fest and a testament to how the event has grown over the years. The scale of the production reaches new heights on every level. This is also the first time they have produced in the Theater at the Fort in Lawrence. It’s a beautiful space, and the set includes a two-tiered barn with lanterns and candles setting the mood. The story explores the delicate balance Shakespeare had to find between writing powerful stories and not offending the Queen. It also debates the societal expectations placed on a ruler who was a woman in a traditionally male position of leadership. Glenn Dobbs’...

Mark your calendars! The dates and locations of this year's Bard Fest have been announced. The annual festival brings together multiple theatre companies and this year, multiple locations, to present Shakespeare's work.  The Shakespeare festival is returning to the IndyFringe Basile Theatre and expanding to The Cat Theatre in Carmel and The Theatre at the Fort in Lawrence. It will include all new original productions of Measure for Measure, Antony and Cleopatra, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and  Macbeth. It will also feature two additional productions of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? and the award-winning Elizabeth Rex by Timothy Findley. The shows, produced by Bard Fest,  will continue to bring the region’s finest actors to Indianapolis and provide unique visions of the Bard of Avon along with modern classical contemporaries. Bard Fest was first conceived by Glenn Dobbs in the spring of 2015. Launching with an admittedly “overly ambitious” schedule of eight p...