Shakespeare Festival concludes with witty fools

The annual Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival concludes this year with a play featuring some of the Bard’s most foolish characters.

Bard to Go, Grand Valley’s all-student touring Shakespeare troupe, will offer a final performance of the 50-minute production, “Witty Fools and Foolish Wits,” Saturday, November 7, in Loosemore Auditorium located in the DeVos Center on the Pew Grand Rapids Campus. The performance will be preceded by the awards ceremony for the annual Shakespeare Festival Student Competition beginning at 1 p.m.

During “Witty Fools and Foolish Wits,” audiences will experience scenes from Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” “As You Like It,” “The Tempest,” “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” and “King Lear” through the eyes of Shakespeare’s fools and clowns who often turn out to be the wisest of his characters.

Bard to Go is a part of the educational outreach programs incorporated into the annual Grand Valley Shakespeare Festival. This year, the group performed “Witty Fools and Foolish Wits” at eight Michigan schools for approximately 450 students. In December, Bard to Go will travel to Madison, Wisconsin, to perform for about 1,000 middle and high school students. Over past seasons, the troupe has traveled around the world to perform in various locations, including Italy, Canada, Czech Republic, China, Jamaica and more.

For more information, contact Katherine Mayberry, Bard to Go producer, at [email protected] or visit gvsu.edu/shakes.