Delaware Shakespeare announces its 2025 season.
The new season centers around two major events - the summer festival in Wilmington’s Rockwood Park and the group’s fall community tour.
For the summer festival, Del Shakes offers a classic Shakespeare play re-set in modern times - Twelfth Night, O Lo Que Quieras, a bilingual, musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
“It follows two twins who are from Venezuela and they get shipwrecked on the lands of Illyria, which seems pretty similar to the modern US, and they are trying to navigate a lot of major questions around immigration, but also just the major themes that pop up in Shakespeare of love and loyalty and trying to be reunited," says Artistic Director Mariah Ghant
She adds that the production isn’t the play Shakespeare enthusiasts are used to, but the themes in Shakespeare’s work run throughout the performance alongside modern issues like immigration.
“With Twelfth Night, we're able to put this whole other lens on top of it, but it is still that same story and it is still able to be seen and compared next to what's happening current day," she said.
For the group’s community tour this fall, they will perform what is thought to be one of the Bard’s earliest plays. Ghant says the community tour is an important part of the group’s mission.
“We call it our cornerstone of the work we do at Del Shakes, so we will be taking our production throughout the whole state of Delaware and we'll travel for three weeks, going to non-traditional performance spaces and we'll be doing Two Gentlemen of Verona," she said.
Among the non-traditional spaces the company visits on their community tour are correctional institutions and mental health facilities, as well as libraries and community centers around the First State.
Performance dates and times for Del Shakes’ summer festival will be announced in the next few weeks, with more information on the community tour coming in the next few months.
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
