SAN DIEGO, CALIF.: The Old Globe has announced its 2016 summer season, featuring new works, the annual summer Shakespeare festival, and a peek at the 1623 First Folio edition of the Bard’s plays.
“The Old Globe’s 2016 summer season is all about the excellence that makes this theatre so special,” said artistic director Barry Edelstein in a statement. “This lineup of productions, enhanced by our growing program of community engagement activities and of course the previously announced visit of Shakespeare’s First Folio to our city, will make the summer of 2016 one to remember. I can’t wait to share it with the Globe’s warm and wonderful audience.”
The season kicks off with the West Coast premiere of a musical adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (July 6–August 14, 2016 ), developed by Rick Boynton, with book, music, and lyrics by Paul Gordon, orchestrations by Larry Hochman and Bruce Coughlin, and with additional arrangements by Curtis Moore. The production will be presented in association with Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and will be directed by CST artistic director Barbara Gaines.
Next will be the world premiere of Steve Martin’s Meteor Shower (July 30–Sept. 4, 2016), a coproduction with Long Wharf Theatre about two couples who gather in a backyard to watch a meteor shower, while tempers flare and sparks fly. Gordon Edelstein will direct.
The Summer Shakespeare Festival will include Macbeth (June 19–July 24, 2016) directed by Brian Kulick, and Love’s Labor’s Lost (August 14–Sept.18, 2016), directed by Kathleen Marshall.
Also part of the season, the Globe and the San Diego Public Library will be the California host for the traveling Shakespeare First Folio and exhibition “First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare” (June 4–July 7, 2016). The nationwide project is spearheaded by the Folger Shakespeare Library, in partnership with Cincinnati Museum Center, and the American Library Association. The tour will present the original 1623 First Folio edition of Shakespeare—displayed open to Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” speech—along with a bevy of public events and activities.
