Performance of Lynn Redgrave’s Shakespeare for my Father
Tony Award nominee Kathleen Chalfant (Angels in America, Wit) will perform a staged reading of Lynn Redgrave’s celebrated play, Shakespeare for my Father at the Folger Shakespeare Library on Monday, November 11 at 7:30pm.
Kathleen Chalfant, a dear friend of Lynn Redgrave, has won numerous awards for her stage work, which includes the 1993 Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, for which she was nominated for a Tony; Wit, which earned her Obie, Drama Desk, and other awards; and her 2003 performance in Talking Heads, which earned her a second Obie.
Lynn Redgrave wrote Shakespeare for my Father after receiving an invitation in 1991 from the Folger to present an evening of Shakespeare and family anecdotes. She went on to develop and tour the play internationally, garnering Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations along the way. It and other material related to her remarkable career as actor and playwright, were acquired by the Folger Shakespeare Library in the Redgrave archive last spring, and are part of a new exhibition “Here is a Play Fitted,” on view in the Folger’s Great Hall after the November 11 reading – and through January 12.
The staged reading of Shakespeare for my Father is presented in association with the Davis Performing Arts Center at Georgetown University. An additional performance will be held at the Davis Center’s Gonda Theatre on Tuesday, November 12 at 7:30 p.m.
KATHLEEN CHALFANT is one of the theater’s most celebrated actors. She is well known to New York audiences and worldwide for her portrayal of Vivian Bearing in the Off-Broadway, Los Angeles and London productions of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wit. For her performance, Ms. Chalfant received the Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama League Award, LA Ovation Award, Connecticut Critics Circle Award, as well as her second Obie Award. She was also acclaimed for her Tony-nominated performance as Hannah Pitt in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America on Broadway.
Folger Shakespeare Library is a renowned center for scholarship, learning, culture, and the arts. Home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection and a primary repository for research material from the early modern period (1500-1750), Folger Shakespeare Library is an internationally recognized research library offering advanced scholarly programs in the humanities; a national leader in how Shakespeare is taught in grades K-12; and an award-winning producer of cultural and arts programs—theater, music, poetry, exhibits, lectures, and family programs. A gift to the American people from industrialist Henry Clay Folger, Folger Shakespeare Library—located one block east of the U.S. Capitol — opened in 1932 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Learn more here.