{"id":390871,"date":"2025-11-19T22:29:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T22:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/390871\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T22:29:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T22:29:22","slug":"shakespeare-in-the-park-just-revealed-its-next-summer-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/390871\/","title":{"rendered":"Shakespeare in the Park just revealed its next summer season"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Public Theater<\/a>‘s free Shakespeare in the Park<\/a>\u00a0will be back at full steam next summer. Having closed for renovations to Central Park’s Delacorte Theater<\/a>\u00a0in 2023, and\u00a0came back at half power\u00a0this year with a single production\u2014Twelfth Night, starring Lupita Nyong’o, Sandra Oh and Peter Dinklage<\/a>\u2014the series is set to return in 2026 with two full Shakespeare productions at the Delacorte: Romeo and Juliet and\u00a0The Winter’s Tale. The Public’s Mobile Theater Unit will also travel\u00a0through all five boroughs with an outdoor version of\u00a0As You Like It.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These selections represent three very different approaches to romance: one is a tragedy, one is a comedy, and the third\u00a0is a bittersweet mixture of the two.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Romeo and Juliet, the earliest of Shakespeare’s major tragedies, is the timeless story of\u00a0teenagers who, in rebellion against their disapproving parents, have sex and then die after scoring drugs from a local priest.\u00a0This version will be\u00a0helmed by the Public\u2019s resident director and associate director, Saheem Ali, whose\u00a0credits include\u00a0this year’s\u00a0Twelfth Night in the Park as well as Broadway’s\u00a0Buena Vista Social Club<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Delacorte
\nPhotograph: Courtesy Jeff GoldbergDelacorte Theater <\/p>\n

The Winter’s Tale, by contrast, is one of the last plays that Shakespeare ever wrote, and it offers\u00a0somewhat happier\u00a0hopes for lovers. A sweeping\u00a0story of jealousy, love, repentance, angry bears and magic statuary, it begins in deep suffering\u00a0but ends, like winter itself, with the prospect of healing and rebirth. It will be directed by that old master Daniel Sullivan\u2014who, at 85, has directed eleven previous Shakespeare in the Park, along with such Broadway favorites as\u00a0The Heidi Chronicles,\u00a0Good People and Proof.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As You Like It\u00a0is lighter fare: an ardent comedy about the forest romps of an ousted duke, his cross-dressing daughter, her lovestruck swain and various others. Up-and-comer Emma Rosa Went, the Public’s first Directing Fellow, will direct\u00a0a\u00a0stripped-down, travel-ready version of the play for the Mobile Theater Unit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In addition to these three productions, the Public will also continue its civic-minded Public Works series<\/a>, which collaborates with multiple New York communities to create a large-scale theater production. The series will return to the Delacorte in August after getting bumped to a different location with its\u00a0Pericles<\/a> this summer. The identity of the 2026 offering has not yet been revealed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Details about these productions, including casting and schedules, are yet to come. But it’s not too soon to start dreaming about a summer of Shakespearean romance.<\/p>\n

\"Delacorte
\nPhotograph: Courtesy Jeff GoldbergDelacorte Theater in Central Park <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Public Theater‘s free Shakespeare in the Park\u00a0will be back at full steam next summer. Having closed for…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":390872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,31028,405,403,58669,5226,5225,5228,5227,1148,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-390871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-categories-theater","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-news-theater-performance","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-theater","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115578731173525956","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}