Off-Broadway and Helen Hayes Award Winners Join Shakespeare in the Woods 2026 Season

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Fran Tapia and Tatiana Graves-Kochuthara join the Vermont company for the 'Chaos and Folly' season.

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Casting has been announced for Shakespeare in the Woods' previously announced 2026 Repertory Season of LEAR and MERRY WIVES ! The dual productions will feature a company of ten dynamic artists bringing Off-Broadway, award-winning Washington D.C., and international stage experience to the woods of Vermont this summer.

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The two new adaptations by directors Elizabeth Dinkova (Lear) and Jaz Hall (Merry Wives), comprise the season of 'Chaos and Folly', boldly reimagining the classics through Shakespeare in the Woods' modern, radical, and gender expansive queer lens.

The company includes Sandy Borrero, James Canfield, Tatiana Graves-Kochuthara (Off-Bway: Sulfur Bottom), Elsa Kennedy, Jesse B. Koehler (The Mercury Store Acting Co.), Raghad Makhlouf, Katharine Maness*, Fran Tapia (four-time Helen Hayes Award winner), Antony Terrell, Deychen Volino-Gyesta (Off-Bway: Are The Bennet Girls Ok?).

Dinkova's Lear introduces a small secluded community that has sworn off the rest of the world and built their own perfect haven in the woods. In this land of sacred hymns and mystical rites, matriarch Lear demands complete submission, but it's a small price to pay for utopia. In Hall's Merry Wives, a burlesque fever dream unfolds filled with heightened absurdity, masculine peacockery, queer camp, and omniscient Emcees Mistress Page & Mistress Ford leading the festivities every step of the way.

The productions will also have costume design by Kat Ibasco (Theatre Group Asia's A Chorus Line), lighting by Mike Mitrano, sound and original music by Elsa Kennedy, intimacy choreography by Greta Zandstra, Fight Choreography by JT Turner, movement choreography by Sandy Borrero and Tatiana Graves-Kochuthara, with stage managers Lucy Roberts * (Slanted! Enchanted!) and Beatrice Feldbush. (*Denotes members of Actors' Equity Association.)

Tickets for Lear and Merry Wives are currently available, with sliding scale pricing options. Season performances occur Wednesdays-Sundays, August 12-30, and take place outdoors on the Taconic Lawn at The Equinox Golf Resort & Spa (3567 Main St, Manchester, VT 05254). Rain or shine.

About: Shakespeare in the Woods (SitW) is an outdoor theatre company committed to leading bold theatrical experimentation through a modern, radical, and gender expansive queer lens, in pursuit of a reimagined Shakespeare Canon for the here and now. The company was founded in 2019 and is based in Manchester, VT.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/vermont/article/Cast-Set-For-LEAR-and-MERRY-WIVES-at-Shakespeare-In-The-Woods-2026-20260623)._