"Complete Sonnets Festival" brings out the all-stars

By Quinton Skinner Fri., May 14 2010 at 8:00 AM

Categories: Theater

Crist Ballas/Zach Curtis

Actually, her eyes are somewhat like the sun . . .

We're a week out from Classical Actors Ensemble's The Complete Sonnets Festival at Intermedia Arts, but this could turn out to be a hot ticket. All 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets will be performed, in one form or another, at the festival, and the list of talent turning up is nothing short of stellar.

Here's a sampler of artists appearing: Barbra Berlovitz, Bain Boehlke, Carlyle Brown, Joe Chvala, Christiana Clark, Jon Ferguson, Leif Jurgenson, John Miller-Stephany, Jennifer Baldwin Peden, and Wade Vaughn.

And that's just a more or less random sample. We have actors, people from the dance world, directors, multi-disciplinary performers, and just about every kind of stage artist in town. And they're each going to offer a distinctive take on some of the most sublime and sophisticated poetry in the English language.

The show is going to be broken up into two programs: one running Friday May 21, the second Saturday May 22. Both programs will run concurrently on Sunday May 23. The event is a start-up for the Ensemble, a new local company dedicated to producing works from the English Renaissance. This will be one hell of a kick-off.

The Complete Sonnets Festival runs May 21-23. All seats are $25 and can be bought here.