Shakespeare at Winedale’s 2014 summer class takes the stage 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 opens Thursday, July 17, and runs through Sunday, August 10. Performances are Thursday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m., with matinees on Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. General admission tickets are $10 ($5 for students and University of Texas faculty and staff) and can be ordered online at shakespeare-winedale.org.
This summer’s plays focus on love: from the first exciting days of courtship, to the trials of marriage, to devastating heartbreak. 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.”
The Shakespeare at Winedale program, housed in the UT College of Liberal Arts, 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. The barn is part of the Winedale Historical Complex located at 3738 FM 2714 near Round Top, Texas.
