Dear Friends,

It’s been almost ten years since we opened our hearts to Baltimore and the doors to the most beautiful, historic, and intimate theatre in the region.  Since then, we’ve served over 230,000 people including 110,000 students.  But that’s not all we’re proud of…

We’re proud of the innovative and heartfelt way we stage the classics, our commitment to using local actors and the diversity on our stages, our introducing thousands of local students to live performances of Shakespeare, our burgeoning Shakespeare Beyond free parks tour, and, always, our warm welcome to our communities. Because Shakespeare is for Everyone.

I’m so excited to share with you our 2024-25 mainstage season.

We are especially anticipating our participation in the recently announced Baltimore August Wilson Celebration, a city-wide project that Chesapeake Shakespeare is spearheading. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone was said to be Wilson’s favorite of all his work.  Set in 1911 during the great migration, this powerful play centers on a community helping a damaged man find himself and his song.

Of course, our own A Christmas Carol will be back (as a subscriber add-on) with some delightful staging changes and the beloved Greg Burgess returning as Scrooge.

Ian Gallanar and Shakespeare comedy are the perfect combination and if you add in the quirkiness of Baltimore, you get an uproarious It’s the Comedy of Errors, Hon!  A perfect storm of mistaken identity, this raucous comedy will celebrate our beloved city and the outrageous characters that inhabit it.  It’s also our 100th production in our history!

Ever since I saw Mary Stuart in New York years ago, I’ve been dying to produce it on our stage.  This play by the “German Shakespeare” is written in verse but we are using a dynamic and modern new translation.  The face-off between the powerful but vulnerable Queen Elizabeth I and her prisoner and cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, is potent and unforgettable theatre.

We’ll be back at our outdoor home in Ellicott City with Chesapeake Shakespeare-in-the-Ruins and Julius Caesar (also a subscriber add-on.)  This is an amazing play teeming with magic and portents and storms, plots and conspiracies, an assassination with multiple culprits, and it has a ghost!   It also poses deep moral questions about power, language, and honor.  What a great play.

I hope you are inspired to go on a journey with us to experience the Great Migration, a Shakespearean Charm City, Elizabethan England, and ancient Rome.  I promise these astonishing plays will be worth the trip. Subscribe today!

Enthusiastically yours,

Lesley Malin
Producing Executive Director