Louis Fantasia has produced an extraordinary one night only performance of BritWeek’s Evening of Shakespeare, Music & Love. These generous actors have given their time to celebrate the Bard’s 450th Birthday with BritWeek and support the Inner City Shakespeare Ensemble and the Hobart Elementary Shakespeareans. Don’t miss this Evening! Tickets are available from www.britweek.org.
Press call with actors Friday, April 25 at 6.30pm, the Moss Theater, Santa Monica.
20 LEADING ACTORS TO STAR IN
ONE NIGHT ONLY PERFORMANCE OF
BRITWEEK’S EVENING OF SHAKESPEARE, MUSIC AND LOVE
On April 25, 2014, an extraordinary group of 20 leading
actors will perform sonnets, readings and songs to celebrate
the Bard’s 450th birthday at the Moss Theater in Santa
Monica. “The cast are some of the best actors for tragedy,
comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral–comical, tragical–
comical–historical–pastoral and scene invisible’ as
Shakespeare himself would say,” noted Louis Fantasia,
Shakespeare director and scholar.
Britweek’s Evening of Shakespeare, Music and
Love is presented by Beverly Hills Wealth
Management, with a portion of the proceeds supporting
the Hobart Elementary Shakespeareans and the
Inner City Shakespeare Ensemble, two outstanding LA
based Shakespeare programs.
Aston Martin will sponsor
the VIP after party at the Moss Theater.
The evening is co-hosted by performers Ioan Gruffudd and Joely Fisher
The cast of actors in the 90-minute production are:
Ashley Bell, Eric Braeden, Claudia Christian, Suzan Crowley, Nigel Daly, Neil
Dickson, Joely Fisher, Mira Furlan, Judy Geeson, Michele Greene, Ioan
Gruffudd, Harry Hamlin, Malcolm McDowell, David Melville, Victoria Platt, Jane
Seymour, Joan Van Ark, Sophie Winkleman, Robert Wisdom and Michael York.
“Shakespeare is the voice of human experience,” according to actor Malcolm McDowell,
who will recite lines from The Tempest. “There is no emotion that any of us has felt — anger,
love, joy, pain, loss — that Shakespeare hasn’t written about. That’s what makes him so
human.”
“Shakespeare was enormously important to me in high school here in Southern California. I
remember the great Shakespeare festivals we used to compete in. I even won the Southern
California Drama Teachers’ competition by playing Juliet! How cool was that! It was such a
great opportunity to deal with Shakespeare’s rich language, and those fabulous characters.
I’m thrilled to be able to cohost this evening that supports the work of two great Shakespeare
in-school programs – the Hobart Elementary Shakespeareans and the Inner City Shakespeare
Company. It’s just a great opportunity to give back and keep that love of Shakespeare alive,”
says co-host Joely Fisher.
“People underestimate Shakespeare’s impact on music,” says Fantasia, “not only are his
plays full of songs and his plays used as the basis for dozens of operas, composers from
classical to jazz have set his words to music.” Martin Neary, once organist and master of
C4 GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS
the Choristers at Westminster Abbey, will direct the Millennium Consort Singers in
Renaissance, Elizabethan and modern choral masterpieces based on Shakespeare’s texts.
Jazz artists Sherry Williams will sing classics from composer John Dankworth’s
Shakespeare’s Songbook, composed for his wife, the late Cleo Lane.
“BritWeek celebrates creativity and innovation and no-one in history was more creative and
innovative than Shakespeare,” says BritWeek Chairman Bob Peirce. “His plays and
sonnets are as alive and new as they were in his lifetime. Thousands of his words and
phrases form a huge part of the English language today. And of course he was a great
romantic!”
Since its foundation in 2007, BritWeek has grown into a program with over 40 events each
spring in Los Angeles, when a creative connection between the UK and LA attracts
thousands of people for two weeks. Now a fixture on the LA calendar, the variety of events
say as much about this great city as it does about the Brits who come here to live, work and
play.
Tickets and VIP package for “An Evening of Shakespeare, Music and Love”
are on sale at www.britweek.org.
Contact [email protected] for VIP packages inquires
For press contact: Caroline Graham, C4 Global Communications
[email protected]| 310.899.2727 | www.c4global.com
