Montgomery College to Hold Annual Shakespeare Festival April 1-5

WILLPOWER! - Montgomery College’s annual Shakespeare festival returns this spring, April 1-5, with an inspired Shakespeare production and line-up of thought-provoking workshop leaders, guest artists and lecturers. 

This year’s festival will showcase the National Players’ production of Romeo and Juliet, which will be presented in the Theatre Arts Arena on the Rockville Campus on Thursday, April 4 at 7 p.m. Admission for the play and for all WILLPOWER! events is free and open to the public.

WILLPOWER! also features its annual Adrian Webber Memorial Lecture, “Becoming Juliet,” delivered by Dr. Gerard Passannante, associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Maryland. His talk will use the figure of Juliet to discuss the notions of “transforming” and “becoming” in Shakespeare. The discussion examines how it is that we can know the inner life of a character simply by observing “two hours of traffic” on the stage.

Guest artists and master teachers this year are members of Maryland Shakespeare Festival, Taffety Punk Theatre Company, Vulcan’s Forge and Faction of Fools.  

Additional lectures and workshops will also be presented by the esteemed faculty and faculty emeritus of Montgomery College including Stephen Bess, assistant professor of English; Genevieve Carminati, professor of English, Swift Dickison, professor of English; Dr. Barbara Hoberman, professor of biology; Sasha Olinick, part-time professor of speech, dance, and theatre; Dr. Deborah Stearns, professor of psychology; and Dr. Bill Soderberg, professor of philosophy.

A full schedule of WILLPOWER! events can be found online at www.montgomerycollege.edu/willpower.

Support for WILLPOWER! is generously provided by the Webber Family Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Montgomery College Divisions of Fine, Performing, and Visual Arts and the Humanities.

No tickets or reservations are required for any event.

For more information, contact KenYatta Rogers at kenyatta.rogers@montgomerycollege.edu or 240-567-4001.

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Montgomery College is a public, open admissions community college with campuses in Germantown, Rockville, and Takoma Park/Silver Spring, plus workforce development/continuing education centers and off-site programs throughout Montgomery County, Md. The College serves nearly 60,000 students a year, through both credit and noncredit programs, in more than 130 areas of study.