Shakespeare Festival’s future is bright
The New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane University has announced a historic 2016 season and a new fundraising campaign that will help ensure its bright future.
“In 2016, New Orleans will present one of the most unique celebrations of Shakespeare’s life in the world,” says Martin Sachs, the festival’s artistic director.
The Shakespeare Festival will present the following performances in the Lupin Theater at Tulane.
• World-renowned actor Lisa Wolpe will put on her one-woman show, Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender, from May 20–22.
• Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona will run June 18–July 2.
• The Illusion by Tony Kushner, freely adapted from Pierre Corneille’s L’Illusion Comique, will run from July 23–Aug. 6.
• Two collaborations with The NOLA Project, entitled By Any Scenes Necessary, will run June 21 and July 27, each performance for one night only.
In May, the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane will be home to the exhibition “First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare.”
In addition, a new fundraising campaign aims to ensure that the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival at Tulane thrives (in William Shakespeare’s own words) “for ever and a day.”
The Shakespeare Festival’s 14-member advisory board has committed to establishing an endowment to support the festival, and is seeking support from Tulane and Shakespeare fans.
“This endowment will support the important work of the festival and bring it to the next level,” says Edward “Ted” Martin, chair of the Shakespeare Festival’s advisory board.
The endowment will help cover the increasing costs of sets, costumes and union wages, while ensuring that the quality of productions continues to reach new heights, according to managing director Clare Moncrief.
The Shakespeare Festival relies on the generous support of the Tulane School of Liberal Arts, ticket sales and donations. The festival puts on two main stage productions each summer, various lagniappe events and educational programming that brings Shakespeare to thousands of local schoolchildren every year, Moncrief says.
For more information on the Shakespeare Festival Endowment Campaign, contact Lauren Phipps, director of development for the School of Liberal Arts, at 504-247-1375, or development officer Laurie Martin at 504-862-3045. Discounted season tickets are available now online.
Mary Sparacello is a communications specialist in the Office of Development Communications.
