Holy Cross’ Redfeather Theatre Brings Shakespeare to Worcester for the Fifth Year

WORCESTER, Mass. – The Redfeather Theatre Company at Holy Cross will present the fifth annual Worcester Shakespeare Festival at the Memorial Grove Amphitheatre in Green Hill Park. The season runs July 23 - August 17, Wednesday - Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for senior citizens, and $5 for students.

Two of Shakespeare’s greatest comedies A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night will be performed.  Both plays explore the hilarious insanity that occurs when people are madly in love.  In A Midsummer Night’s Dream a group of frustrated young people run away to seek love and find themselves in a magical forest filled with mischievous fairies. Twelfth Night tells the tale of a young woman who causes comical mayhem when she disguises herself as a man.

New developments this summer include the expansion of the performance season from three weeks to four weeks, the mounting of two shows in repertory and the arrival of a new artistic director, Mel Cobb.

In 1991, Cobb was a founding member of the Globe Theatre in London. In 2001, he came to the U.S. and joined Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, Mass. as an actor and administrator. Cobb’s presence is a tribute to the past success of the company and a harbinger of great things to come.

According to Edward Isser, professor and chair of the theatre department at Holy Cross and director of the critically acclaimed Redfeather productions of As You Like It and Richard III, “Mel is throwing his hat into our ring because he believes that Redfeather is on the verge of becoming a major artistic institution and he wants to be an integral part of it. Of course the participation of such a great talent will help us immensely in achieving this goal.”

Cobb will direct Twelfth Night and play the role of Nick Bottom in Isser’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Worcester audiences have previously seen him as Friar Laurence in the popular production of Romeo and Juliet at Worcester Foothills Theatre and as Prospero in The Tempest at Holy Cross.  Both productions were directed by Isser.

The mission of Redfeather at Holy Cross is to make Shakespeare accessible—in every sense of the word—to the people of central Massachusetts. A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night, two of the most popular plays in the Shakespearean canon, are much loved by audiences young and old.  Performed in the bucolic setting of Green Hill Park, the 2008 Worcester Shakespeare Festival promises to be family friendly and richly rewarding.