Shake IT, Baby

IT digs the Bard . So we drooled a little on our doublet when we heard about the Kennedy Center’s six-month-long Shakespeare in Washington

festival (though we do wish they’d come up with a catchier name…Shakespeare is Capital?). The fest kicks off on Saturday (this year’s bona fide twelfth night) with a free reading of Will’s eponymous play in the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall, directed by the Shakespeare Theatre Company‘s artistic director. From that point on, more than a hundred performances and exhibits will proliferate throughout the D.C. area including offerings by local outfits like Woolly Mammoth, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. More exotic presenters during the course of the event include the Kirov ballet and opera, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and jazz doyenne Dame Cleo Laine. For a non-traditional take on the exploits of everybody’s favorite Danish prince, we recommend the Tiny Ninja Theater‘s interpretation starring plastic vending machine figurines, the Studio Theatre‘s production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead or Hamlet’s trial, as presided over by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. If your ears don’t perk up at either iambic pentameter or the dulcet tunes of Cole Porter, perhaps you will find the accompanying exhibits at the National Building Museum and various other local galleries more to your liking. And if none of this floats your boat…why on earth did you read this far? You must have a crush on us or something.