Stratford Festival streaming launches on Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23, with King Lear, directed by Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino and featuring Colm Feore in the title role.
“At difficult times such as we’re experiencing now, it can be helpful to re-examine the great works of literature,” says Cimolino. “Much has been made recently of the suggestion that when Shakespeare wrote King Lear, in 1606, he was in quarantine because of the plague. In looking at the play, we see that it documents not only the breakdown of an old king and the destruction of two families but also the disruption of an entire country. It seems almost prophetic.”
The roll-out of the films has been scheduled around four themes that seem pertinent at this time of pandemic and might spark further thought or conversation amongst viewers: Social Order, Isolation, Minds Pushed to the Edge, and Relationships.
Each film will debut with a 7 p.m. viewing party and remain available for free for a three-week period on the Stratford Festival website as follows:
Social Order and Leadership
King Lear: April 23 to May 14
Coriolanus: April 30 to May 21
Macbeth: May 7 to 28
Isolation
The Tempest: May 14 to June 4
Timon of Athens: May 21 to June 11
Love’s Labour’s Lost: May 28 to June 18
Minds Pushed to the Edge
Hamlet: June 4 to 25
King John: June 11 to July 2
Pericles: June 18 to July 9
Relationships
Antony and Cleopatra: June 25 to July 16
Romeo and Juliet: July 2 to 23
The Taming of the Shrew: July 9 to 30
$0 not cheap enough to tolerate shakespeare