By Dennis Abrams

It’s been called one of the most brutal of all Shakespeare’s plays. For centuries it was denigrated as being unworthy of his genius. But in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it’s relevance became all too apparent. Jan Kott said through it, “we come to understand, perhaps more than by looking at any other Shakespearean play, the nature of his genius.” Director Julie Taymor said of it that “It seems like a play written for today, it reeks of now.” And Jonathan Forman argues that “It is the Shakespeare play for our time, a work of art that speaks directly to the age of Rwanda and Bosnia.”

The play is Titus Andronicus. We hope you can you join us as we begin our reading of this brutal and bloody drama in our year-long exploration of the plays of William Shakespeare at The Play’s The Thing.