Shakespeare’s Shaking Aspen

July 31st, 2006 at 08:26am Post Staff 43

You probably heard of him—this guy, William Shakespeare, the one that people in Aspen just won’t shut up about. Something about the way he writes. The universality of something or other.

You know—the usual.

But people in Aspen and hereabouts just can’t get enough Will in their world. A “Sharing Shakespeare” group is at the end of year one of a three-year reading of the plays that drew over 100 subscribers. That group at the Aspen Institute has been nothing less than a local focal point for Shakespeare fanatics in the Roaring Fork Valley. Now productions large and small are in the works that just might make Aspen an epicenter for Shakespearean troupes large and small.

Start small Wednesday night behind the library at Galena Plaza downtown with The Hudson Reed Ensemble’s performance of great wooing scenes from Shakespeare, including the balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet.”

But things on the Shakespeare scene will grow bigger by the yard next year with the summer 2007 production of “As You Like It” by Theatre Aspen under the tent at Rio Grande Park. Then, in summer 2008, The Shakespeare Theatre Company of Washington, D.C., is set for a return trip to mount a full-blown production to match “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” of 2005 at the Aspen District Theatre.

It doesn’t hurt that the Aspen Institute is embracing the arts in general and Shakespeare in particular: president and CEO Walter Isaacson is on the board of the Shakespeare Company inside the Beltway.

Entry Filed under: Theater, Aspen, Pitkin County, Fractional Post