Reading Series will Help Theater Select Future Plays

Two Shakespeare plays and one by Bertolt Brecht, the 20th-century German playwright and theater director, will make up the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's inaugural fall reading series.

The series, in which actors read aloud from scripts, will help the Madison-based theater's staff decide whether to produce those shows in future seasons.

"We are always looking for new and innovative ways in which to engage our audience in our program," said spokesman Rick Engler. "This program also makes it possible for us to get feedback on shows that appear on our list of possible plays."

Each reading will include background information about the play and will be followed by a talk-back with the artists and audience.

The series begins Sept. 20 with "Titus Andronicus," one of Shakespeare's early tragedies and his bloodiest play. "Titus," which depicts a Roman general's acts of revenge against his enemy, queen of the Goths, will be followed by Brecht's "The Good Woman of Setzuan" on Oct. 4. That play with music, finished when Brecht was in exile in the United States in the 1940s, is a parable set in China about a young prostitute who tries to live as a "good" person.

The last reading on Nov. 15 will be "Henry VIII," one of Shakespeare's history plays, which has been produced rarely.

All readings are at 7:30 p.m. Mondays at the F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre on the Drew University campus.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students. Subscriptions for all three readings cost $40 for adults and $25 for students.

The theater also has special events planned this fall. They include a pre-Halloween evening titled "Something Wicked This Way Comes," in which Shakespeare Theatre actors and others who have appeared in popular horror films read from ghost and other scary stories. The event will be at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 25 at the F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre. Tickets are $32. 

On Nov. 14, an event called "Tea and Tonic" at the Park Avenue Club in Florham Park will raise funds for the Shakespeare Theatre's education programs. It will feature champagne cocktails; Pimm's tonics and gin; tea-tasting and cigar-rolling stations; cucumber sandwiches, scones, strawberries and cream, and other high-tea classics; as well as music for dancing. Tickets are $135.

At 7 that evening, the Shakespeare Theatre will co-present standup comedian and impressionist Rick Miller in "MacHomer," a one-man performance of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" melded with "The Simpsons" TV show, at the Community Theatre at the Mayo Center for the Performing Arts  in Morristown.

Miller uses more than 50 voices in the show, including Homer Simpson as Macbeth, Marge Simpson as Lady Macbeth and Bart, Lisa, Ned Flanders and others, such as Kermit the frog from "Sesame Street." Tickets range from $27 to $47.