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THE OFFICIAL SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN
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ABOUT
You take your seat just as the lights go down. The curtain rises, and all at once you are transported to a miraculous foreign land: The battlements of Elsinore castle. A beach in Illyria. A blasted heath in Scotland. A canal in Venice. A throne room in Sicilia, or Athens, or Egypt. A street in Rome, or Verona, or Ephesus, or anywhere in all the globe.
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You're suddenly confronted by vile witches & hungry warlords, ambitious kings & vengeful ghosts, shipwrecked maidens & jealous princes. The people around you speak in words that have a familiar feel, a roiling and beautiful language that cuts right to the heart of human experience.
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Phrases pour out, filling your ear. Not just the famous words quoted in schools, but words invented for this very stage:
Love is blind. Hush.
Vanish into thin air. Break the ice. Foul play. What's done is done. Come what may. Too much of a good thing. The jaws of death. Brave new world.
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You laugh, all at a part of the story, rising and falling with the fortunes of the most complete characters ever to grace the stage:
Falstaff & Hal. Caesar & Brutus. Viola & Olivia. Romeo & Juliet. Othello & Iago. Kate & Petruchio. Macbeth. Richard. Hamlet.
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Too soon it's over, the story told. You look down at the ticket in your hand, the portal to this realm of swords and words.
A ticket to the Michigan Shakespeare Festival.
In Michigan, this is Pure Shakespeare.
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Shakespeare's plays survive & thrive because of his language, his expression of humanity's light, darkness, & the foibles in-between.
Under the guidance of award-winning Artistic Director Janice L Blixt, the MSF brings that language to life before your eyes.
As the Official Shakespeare Festival of the State of Michigan, the Michigan Shakespeare Festival is a professional Equity theatre company (LOA/LORT) dedicated to producing world-class classical plays.