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2025 Shakespeare season announced: "King Lear" and more!

Author: Shakespeare at Notre Dame

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Shakespeare at Notre Dame is thrilled to celebrate two major anniversaries throughout 2025 — and we hope you’ll join us!

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This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival (NDSF), the professional theater in residence at the University of Notre Dame since 2000. Highlighting this season is the Professional Company production of King Lear, produced for the first time by NDSF and directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh, a director, writer, and educator whose work has been produced by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Playmakers Repertory Company, the Kennedy Center, and many others. King Lear will perform at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center at the University of Notre Dame Aug. 19-31. Tickets on sale at shakespeare.nd.edu on April 1.

“The Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival has spent the past 25 years serving audiences from all around the world,” notes Scott Jackson, Mary Irene Ryan Family Executive Artistic Director of Shakespeare at Notre Dame. “But its most important work is done right here at home in Michiana. Our programs have impacted students of all ages and have provided the opportunity for aspiring theatrical artists to work alongside professionals to create exciting and impactful theatrical productions. We’ve spent decades creating opportunities not just for our collaborators, but our larger community as well, and we’re dedicated to the work of fusing the social justice mission of the University of Notre Dame into the practice of responsible and impactful theatre.”

As part of our opening night celebration, we will be hosting an NDSF alumni reunion on the opening night of King Lear, Thursday, Aug. 21. We’ll be welcoming cast and company members from the past quarter century back to Notre Dame for a night of fellowship and celebration. More information on this event coming soon!

Also returning as part of the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival are ShakeScenes and Shakespeare After Hours! ShakeScenes, a perennial audience favorite featuring performances by community members of all ages, will perform in the Leighton Concert Hall at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center on Saturday, July 19. Shakespeare After Hours, the raucous adults-only night of unrestrained Shakespearean tomfoolery, returns to LangLab in South Bend for two wild performances on Friday, July 25.

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2025 also marks the 50th anniversary of Actors From The London Stage, our resident touring company that tours the United States twice yearly. AFTLS was founded in 1975 at the University of California, Santa Barbara by Dr. Homer “Murph” Swander and Sir Patrick Stewart along with venerated actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company such as David Rintoul, Ben Kingsley, Vivien Heilbron, Sebastian Shaw, and many others. Actors From The London Stage’s unique, bespoke five-actor touring model features a weeklong residency at colleges and universities nationwide, culminating in its trademark performance of an entire Shakespeare play where each actor portrays multiple roles.

“Originally called ACTER, the company started by performing extracts from Shakespeare before moving to productions of complete plays with a cast of only five, doubling roles, often in the same scene,” notes Peter Holland, McMeel Family Chair in Shakespeare Studies at the University of Notre Dame and the academic director of Actors From The London Stage. “Until you have watched an actor playing two roles in the same scene and therefore talking to themself, you have no idea what virtuosity means. Intense, exhilarating theatre, letting Shakespeare's words do the work, AFTLS shows thrill thousands every year on campuses across the US and thousands more learn from their classroom workshops what actors know, whether they are working with students in drama departments or law schools, English departments or future architects, finance majors or future corporate execs.”

We celebrate the company’s incredible legacy with Hamlet, Shakespeare’s iconic tragedy. Hamlet tours throughout spring 2025 to Hope College, William & Mary, the University of Texas at Austin, John Carroll University, Purdue, Mississippi State University, Gonzaga University, and Notre Dame. The Hamlet cast will also appear at the Shakespeare Association of America’s annual meeting in Boston in March, as well as hosting workshops at Notre Dame London during the week of April 21 and performing at the Cockpit Theatre on April 27. Following is a tour of Shakespeare’s late romance The Tempest, touring from September through November.

But that’s not all! Sonnetfest returns to the campus of Notre Dame on April 23 to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday with a daylong reading of all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets at the Duncan Student Center. And our collaboration with ThinkND, Shakespeare & Possibility, continues throughout the spring, with Directorial Concepts and Cutting the Script just posted and other installments to follow throughout the spring. Finally, our educational programs continue at Westville Correctional Facility in Westville, Indiana, and DePaul Academy in South Bend.

There are even more events and presentations in the works for 2025 as well — we hope you’ll join us for what will be one of the busiest and most exciting years in our history. Keep an eye on shakespeare.nd.edu for all of the latest information, and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram as well.

2025 at a Glance:

Originally published by Shakespeare at Notre Dame at shakespeare.nd.edu on February 21, 2025.