Final Bard to Go performance

The Grand Valley State University Shakespeare Festival is wrapping up the 2011 season with the final Bard to Go performances. As the festival’s touring arm, Bard to Go reaches about 800 Michigan middle and high school students each year.

The BTG production, “Lovestruck,” is a 50-minute collage that explores the complications of falling in love, using scenes from The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and other popular Shakespeare plays.

A final performance is free and open to the public, November 5, at 1:30 p.m. in Loosemore Auditorium, DeVos Center, on Grand Valley’s Pew Grand Rapids Campus. It will be preceded by an awards ceremony showcasing the winners of the Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival Annual Student Competition, which features performing, literary and visual arts.

Grand Valley actors include Chaz Albright, Ryan Jackson, Sean Kelley, Allison Staley, Bridgett Vanderhoof, Brynhild Weihe, with student stage manager Lydia Benkert and student videographer Alyson Caillaud-Jones. Professor Karen Libman directs and Professor Katherine Mayberry, also a Shakespeare Festival alumna, is serving as dramaturg for the production. 

This lively production was performed in early October in the Bahamas, by invitation, as part of a “Shakespeare in Paradise” program. The eight-member Bard to Go Team also performed in the Nassau secondary schools.  Bard to Go traveled to the Liverpool International Theatre Festival in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 2010, Italy in 2009, China in 2008, and Jamaica in 2005. Bard to Go won the “Best in Festival” at the Sapperlot Youth Theatre Festival in Brixen, Italy, in 2009.  Learn more about the Bard to Go program at www.gvsu.edu/shakes.