Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney to Adapt and Direct ‘Antony and Cleopatra’

Tarell Alvin McCraney (“The Brothers Size”) will direct and adapt a new production of Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra” as part of a collaboration among the Public Theater, GableStage in Miami and the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Public announced on Monday. The play will have its premiere at the Stratford-Upon-Avon home of the Royal Shakespeare Company, where Mr. McCraney is an artistic associate, in November 2013, before being staged in Miami in January 2014 and later that month at the Public.

In addition to directing the production, Mr. McCraney edited the text, reordered the scene structure and relocated the play to “the late 1700s against the backdrop of Saint-Domingue, on the eve of the Haitian Revolution against the French,” according to a news release. Casting will take place in London, New York and Miami, Mr. McCraney’s hometown.

A 2007 graduate of Yale, Mr. McCraney has also written the trilogy “The Brother/Sister Plays,” “Wig Out” and other plays, including “Head of Passes,” which will have its premiere in Chicago next year.

The production will be the latest collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Company and a New York stage. In 2011 the company had a residency at the Park Avenue Armory as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. In March 2013 its production of “Matilda the Musical,” based on the Roald Dahl children’s book and now running in London, is to begin performances on Broadway.

article by Erik Piepenburg via nytimes.com