Research Guides: Shakespeare Studies: Shakespeare in Performance

Finding Reviews via databases

Theatre News & Reviews

Playbill
Playbill.com is the preeminent site for national and international theatre news, Broadway - Off-Broadway - Regional listings, features, articles and columns by and about theatre personalities.
Internet Broadway Database (IBDb)
IBDB (Internet Broadway Database) archive is the official database for Broadway theatre information. IBDB provides records of productions from the beginnings of New York theatre until today.
London Theatre Guide
This guide was created in early 1995 to provide a reliable source of information and reviews pertaining to London Theatre on the Internet. The objective of the guide is to be as comprehensive as possible for West End theatre listings. We aim to keep the guide up-to-date with all the news and changes as they happen.
nytheatre.com
Online since 1997, nytheatre.com was one of the first theatre information/review websites on the Internet. Today, we are the leading nonprofit web resource for NYC theatre, serving the entire theatre community and focusing particular resources on the indie theater sector.
OOBR - The Off-Off-Broadway Review
The OOBR (Off-Off-Broadway Review) contains current listings of off-off-Broadway plays as well as current and archival performance reviews.

NY Theatres that regularly feature Shakespeare's plays

Public Theater, NYC
As the nation's foremost theatrical producer of Shakespeare and new work, The Public Theater is dedicated to achieving artistic excellence while developing an American theater that is accessible and relevant to all people through productions of challenging new plays, musicals and innovative stagings of the classics.
Theatre for a New Audience, NYC
The mission of Theatre for a New Audience is to help develop and vitalize the performance and study of Shakespeare and classic drama. Theatre for a New Audience produces for audiences Off-Broadway and has also toured nationally and internationally. Theatre for a New Audience finds the contemporary heart of the classics. A reverence for language, spirit of adventure and visual boldness, which supports the work of the writer and actor, mark the Theatre's productions.
Classic Stage Company, NYC
Classic Stage Company is the award-winning Off-Broadway theatre committed to re-imagining the classical repertory for a contemporary American audience. CSC presents plays from the past that speak directly to the issues of today. As we return to works of the past, we endeavor to keep a clear eye on the future, particularly in terms of the next generation of artists and audiences. Classic Stage's artists are the best-established and emerging theater practitioners working in this country.
Brooklyn Academy of Music, NYC
BAM's mission is to be the preeminent progressive performing and cinema arts center of the twenty-first century, engaging both global and local communities. Its enduring purpose is to provide a distinctive environment in which its audiences—annually, more than 500,000 people from a wide geographic area—may experience a broad array of challenging and enriching aesthetic/cultural programs.
Pearl Theatre Company, NYC
In the tradition of the finest ensembles of our theatrical heritage, The Pearl Theatre Company delves into the great plays of the classical repertory armed with shared experience and passionate teamwork. The Resident Acting Company greets the challenges of classical repertory bolstered by season-specific training and craft-building. They are a seasoned group of performers who have trained at some of the most prestigious conservatories in the world.
The Hamptons Shakespeare Festival, Amagansett, NY
The Hamptons Shakespeare Festival (HSF) has produced ten seasons of critically acclaimed free outdoor theater on eastern Long Island. HSF’s productions have distinguished themselves for excellent acting seamlessly fit into beautiful natural surroundings, and imaginative interpretations of the plays filled with original music and dance.
Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Cold Spring, NY
The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is dedicated to producing the plays of Shakespeare with an economy of style that focuses our energy and resources on script, actors, and audience. We communicate the stories with energy, clarity and invention and we distill rather than embellish the language and action. We challenge ourselves and our audiences to take a fresh look at what is essential in Shakespeare's plays.
Shakespeare in the Park(ing) Lot

Maryland Shakespeare Festival 2013 Season

Maryland Shakespeare Festival’s 2014 Season

Midsummer Night's Dream at the Classic Stage Company

By WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Directed by AUSTIN PENDLETON
with PETER SARSGAARD

CSC reunites with the Graduate Acting Program of the Columbia University School of the Arts for the eighth year of The Young Company, CSC’s unique, nationally-recognized Education and Outreach Initiative that has greatly impacted the lives of thousands of NYC public schoolchildren throughout the five boroughs. Come and experience one of Shakespeare’s greatest and most popular tragedies in a bold and vivid new interpretation that has become the hallmark of The Young Company’s approach to classical theatre.

Begins January 2015

Classic Stage Company
CLASSIC STAGE COMPANY is the award-winning Off-Broadway theatre committed to re-imagining the classical repertory for a contemporary American audience.

London / UK Theatres that regularly feature Shakespeare's plays

The websites for Shakespeare's Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the National Theatre are a rich source of information, not only on their current productions, but past productions as well. Some of the sites, particularly the Education pages, include video clips, interviews with performers and directors, and photographs of past/current productions. Be sure to explore the websites fully!

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, London
Shakespeare's Globe is a unique international resource dedicated to the exploration of Shakespeare's work and the playhouse for which he wrote, through the connected means of performance and education.
Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK
The aim of the RSC is to keep modern audiences in touch with Shakespeare as our contemporary. That means that as well as the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, our repertoire includes classic plays by international dramatists and work by living writers.
National Theatre, London
We have three permanent auditoriums - the Olivier, Lyttelton and Cottesloe Theatres - and in these three theatres, we present a mix of new plays and classics, with seven or eight productions in repertory at any one time.
Donmar Warehouse, London
The Donmar Warehouse is a 250-seat subsidised (not for profit) theatre located in the heart of London’s West End with a reputation as one of the UK’s leading producing theatres.
Propeller
Propeller is an all male Shakespeare company, mixing a rigorous approach to the text with a modern physical aesthetic. We look for ways to inform the physical life of the production with the poetry of the text. We give as much control as possible to the actor in the creation of the story hoping to deepen the relationship between performer and audience.

Digital Theater Plus

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Watch high quality films of leading theatre productions
Discover how plays are brought to the stage in interviews with the creative teams
Learn about interpretive choice through detailed analysis of play texts
Teach key plays with stimulating and relevant support

US Theatres that regularly feature Shakespeare's plays

Folger Theatre
The Folger is a world-renowned research center on Shakespeare and on the early modern age in the West. Its conservation lab is a leading innovator in the preservation of rare materials. Its well-known public programs include plays, concerts, literary readings, family activities, and exhibitions, as well as numerous K-12 and college programs for students and teachers. Advanced scholars participate in a variety of Folger Institute seminars and colloquia.
The Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington, DC
Since its founding in 1985, the Shakespeare Theatre Company has endeavored to be the nation’s leading force in the presentation and preservation of classic theatre. Our core mission is to present classic theatre in an accessible, skillful, imaginative, American style that honors playwrights’ language and intentions while viewing their plays through a 21st-century lens.
Harrisburg Shakespeare Company
Harrisburg Shakespeare Company is in its 18th year of providing a unique and widely praised cultural resource to the Central PA community. HSC is best known for Free Shakespeare in the Park, which provides critically acclaimed free performances to thousands each summer. HSC
American Shakespeare Center, Staunton, VA
The American Shakespeare Center recovers the joys and accessibility of Shakespeare's theatre, language, and humanity by exploring the English Renaissance stage and its practices through performance and education.
Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre, Philadelphia, PA
The mission of The Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre is to produce the most excellent Shakespeare productions and education programming, accessible to all.
Summer Shakespeare in Philly's Clark Park
The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Madison, NJ
The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey (formerly called "New Jersey Shakespeare Festival") is one of 22 professional theatres in the state. One of the leading Shakespeare theatres in the nation — serving 100,000 adults and children annually — it is New Jersey's only professional theatre company dedicated to Shakespeare's canon and other classic masterworks. Through its productions and education programs, the company strives to illuminate the universal and lasting relevance of the classics for
Shakespeare & Company, Lenox, MA
Shakespeare & Company aspires to create a theatre of unprecedented excellence rooted in the classical ideals of inquiry, balance, and harmony; a company that performs as the Elizabethans did — in love with poetry, physical prowess, and the mysteries of the universe.
Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Chicago, IL
The Chicago Shakespeare Theater offers a broad spectrum of theatrical experiences year-round, engaging and entertaining audiences from all walks of life and from around the world. The plays of William Shakespeare form the core of our company's work are complemented by other dramatic works—from traditional classical theater to new classics that resonate with Shakespeare’s timeless insights into the human condition.
American Players Theatre, Spring Green, WI
The Theatre's mission is to bring the classics to life for as wide and diverse an audience as possible, making great plays accessible and understandable through skilled and reverent presentation. in 1979, the Theatre has grown in popularity and now is one of the most popular outdoor classical theaters in the country.
The New American Shakespeare Tavern, Atlanta, GA
Based on the proposition Shakespeare's plays cannot be separated from the world from which they were created, ASC used the casual atmosphere and Globe-like ambiance of Manuel's Tavern to explore and illuminate Shakespeare's text. Emerging over time was a company of artists dedicated to a radically pure approach to the text. Each syllable is examined and reexamined for clues as to form, meaning, and original intent.
Alabama Shakespeare Festival
The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, located in Montgomery - Alabama's state capital - is the sixth largest Shakespeare festival in the world and attracts more than 300,000 annual visitors from all 50 states and over 60 countries.
Austin Shakespeare, Austin, TX
Austin Shakespeare presents professional theatre of the highest quality with an emphasis on the plays of William Shakespeare, bringing to the public performances that are fresh, bold, imaginative, thought-provoking, and eminently accessible, connecting the truths of the past with the challenges and possibilities of today.
The Colorado Shakespeare Festival, Denver, CO
The Colorado Shakespeare Festival is a professional theatre company in residence at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
California Shakespeare Theater, Berkeley, CA
We strive for everyone, regardless of age, circumstance, or background, to discover and express the relevance of Shakespeare and the classics in their lives. We make boldly imagined and deeply entertaining interpretations of Shakespeare and the classics.