MARY ELLEN WRIGHT | Staff WriterEditor's note: This story has been updated with information on a change of venue for the play "Measure for Measure," opening Feb. 21.
In 2024, the Lancaster Shakespeare Theatre presented its first play that wasn’t written, or inspired, by William Shakespeare. That was August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning family drama, “The Piano Lesson.”
This season, half of the company’s four main-stage productions are contemporary plays. That’s by design, says Jeremiah Miller, the theater company’s executive artistic director.
“I feel that one way to get people’s foot in the door when it comes to Shakespeare is to introduce other kinds of theater,” Miller says. “I think we’ve reached a point in our development where we want to do other things.”
“If we want to continue growing in terms of building our audience, if you just stick with Shakespeare, there’s a limited audience,” Miller says. “It’s a great audience, and it’s kept us going for a long time, but for us, it’s about reaching more people.”
Miller recently talked about the four plays the troupe is presenting in its 2025 season.
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Main-stage shows
— “Measure for Measure,” 7 p.m. Feb. 21-24 and 26-27, with a matinee Sunday, Feb. 23, has been moved from its previous venue at West Art to the Upper Level space of St. John's Episcopal Church, 321 W. Chestnut St., Lancaster. (In addition, the previously scheduled Feb. 25 performance is canceled; the theater company will contact those who had tickets for that performance).
It’s a dark comedy by Shakespeare that finds the city of Vienna suffering under the rule of a puritanical despot installed by Duke Vincentio (played by Miller, who co-directs).
“It’s a fascinating play, and there are so many relevant themes for the times that we’re living in,” Miller says.
Vincentio has voyeuristic tendencies — going into a prison disguised as a friar so he can hear the prisoners’ confessions, for example — which Miller says makes him interesting.
“Basically, the society, the city that he’s running is completely out of control in terms of crime and debauchery and he decides he just can’t handle it,” he says. “He steps away and he puts his deputy [Angelo] in charge, who is a much more strict, legalistic person.” Angelo starts enforcing old laws, such as those against fornication.
“So, basically that’s where it almost becomes a political satire/allegory,” involving a surveillance society, Miller says.
“We have kind of designed the costumes, in general, to resemble a late-Soviet look. But mainly what I’m going for is an Orwellian aesthetic.”
— “Cry it Out,” April 4-10, at West Art, is a 2017 play by Molly Smith Metzler, the screenwriter of Netflix’s hit show “Maid.”
In the play, an attorney named Jessie is feeling isolated at home with her newborn baby, and reaches out to another new mom to share the experience.
“This is a play. basically. about first-time motherhood,” Miller says.
“I think it’ll appeal to anyone who has ever had a baby and remembers the emotional upheaval of that time, as well as anyone thinking about having a baby and anticipating all the choices that entails,” he says.
The characters in the play “all react in different ways to having their first baby,” he says. “And it’s very funny and very poignant as well.”
— “The Tempest,” June 5-15,” is concerns Prospero, a magician banished to an island with his daughter. He seeks revenge on his enemies by causing a storm and a shipwreck. The audience watches the relationships among Prospero, his daughter, his servants and the shipwrecked royalty.
It’s thought to be the last play Shakespeare wrote. “So, in a way, it’s him at his utmost maturity as a writer,” Miller says. “I’ve always felt like it kind of feels the most like a modern play. It’s just very tightly constructed.
“I think it has a bit of every genre. It has fantasy, it has comedy, it has drama, it has horror, in a way, it has action — it opens with the storm.
This is the theater company’s annual “Shakespeare in the park” production, and will be held in Musser Park, at Chestnut and Lime streets in Lancaster. Though tickets are free, a $20 donation is requested.
— “Streamers,” Oct.10-16, at West Art, chronicles the interaction among a group of soldiers, from very diverse backgrounds, in an army barracks in the early days of the Vietnam War.
Playwright David Rabe served in Vietnam, and wrote a trilogy of plays dealing with that experience.
“‘Streamers’ is a play I’m looking forward to directing,” Miller says, adding he saw a revival of the play off Broadway in 2008 during which he was particularly impressed with the performance of the actor who played the alcoholic Sgt. Cokes.
“What stuck out about the play for me was kind of encapsulated in that character, because he’d obviously been in Vietnam for a while ... and he’d seen a lot of bad things,” Miller says.
“He was just sort of emotionally numb to it all. And toward the end of the play he has a monologue where he kind of describes this war crime, essentially, and he does it sort of with laughter, and comparing the victim of a war crime to Charlie Chaplin,” Miller says. “That speech always haunted me because it drives home the absurdity of war and just also how we can become so desensitized by it.”
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Other programs
— Camp Will, being held at West Art the week of June 9-13, is the theater company’s annual summer Shakespeare camp for students in sixth to 12th grade. The students will study “The Tempest” this year; the camp will culminate with a production of “The Tempest Jr.,” an abridged version of
— Will to Read, from 6-8 p.m. one Thursday a month at the Philadelphia Alumni Writers House, 633 College Ave, Lancaster, at Franklin & Marshall College. Justin Hopkins, a Shakespeare professor at F&M, leads a community discussion each month about one play by the Bard. Remaining discussions are on "Measure for Measure" on Feb. 13, “Much Ado About Nothing” on March 20, and “Coriolanus” on April 24. Tickets are free, but registration is requested.
— LKH Academy, named for the Shakespeare Theatre’s founder, Laura Korach Howell, offers theater-related classes for adults as well as youth. The next class is “Movement as Medicine,” which will teach participants how to use breath and simple choreography to tap into their creative energy. It’s $30 plus a $2.46 fee, and runs from 2-5 p.m. April 26 at Popovsky Performing Arts, 245 Butler Ave., Lancaster.
MICKAYLA MILLER | Staff Writer
MARY ELLEN WRIGHT | Staff Writer
