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2025 Season Announcement

Press Contacts: Print Shop PR Matt Ross / Liz Lombardi / Josie Miller

HUDSON VALLEY SHAKESPEARE ANNOUNCES 2025 SEASON FEATURING

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
DIRECTED BY RYAN QUINN

THORNTON WILDER’S
THE MATCHMAKER
DIRECTED BY DAVIS MCCALLUM
FEATURING KURT RHOADS & NANCE WILLIAMSON

OCTET
A CHAMBER CHOIR MUSICAL
BY DAVE MALLOY
DIRECTED BY AMANDA DEHNERT
PRODUCED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT WITH PLATE SPINNER PRODUCTIONS

HVS CABARET
FOUR NIGHTS OF NEW WORKS FROM HVS ARTISITS
AUGUST 6-9, 2025

AS PART OF HVS’s EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S
JULIUS CAESAR
DIRECTED BY RAZ GOLDEN
SEPTEMBER 15 – OCTOBER 10 2025

AS PART OF HVS2
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S
KING LEAR
DIRECTED BY DAVIS MCCALLUM
FEATURING KURT RHOADS

THE MINOTAUR
BY LUIS QUINTERO

(November 13, 2024 – New York) Hudson Valley Shakespeare (HVS) (Davis McCallum, Artistic Director; Kendra Ekelund, Managing Director) announced today their 2025 Season.

Hudson Valley Shakespeare’s season will include William Shakespeare’s uproarious comedy The Comedy of Errors, directed by longtime company member Ryan Quinn (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd); “One of the sweetest and smartest romantic farces ever written,” (Terry Teachout, WSJ), Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker, directed by Davis McCallum (Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play) and featuring Kurt Rhoads and Nance Williamson; and Octet, a chamber choir musical by Tony Award nominee Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812) and directed by Amanda Dehnert (Love’s Labor’s Lost), produced by special arrangement with Plate Spinner Productions.

HVS will present a new series, HVS Cabaret, which will be four nights of work-in-progress presentations of intimate musical pieces, taking place in the intimate setting of the on-campus Valley Restaurant August 6 – 9, 2025. This year’s lineup includes a work-in-progress solo musical from Bryce Pinkham, Zack Fine, Rona Siddiqui, and Kirya Traber. This project has been developed by Long Wharf Theatre (Jacob Padrón, Artistic Director, Kit Ingui, Managing Director) with additional support from Hudson Valley Shakespeare

Artistic Director Davis McCallum said, “This season marks an exciting moment of transition for Hudson Valley Shakespeare, as it will be our final season under the tent, ahead of the grand opening of the Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center the following summer. To mark this watershed moment, we’ve curated a season that celebrates our rich artistic legacy and looks forward to the exciting possibilities ahead. This summer we’re focusing on plays that celebrate love, laughter, and community – all qualities we plan to bring with us into this new era.”

Hudson Valley Shakespeare is moving their HVS Educational Production to the fall and will premiere the production under the tent before going out on a tour that will include both community venues and regional middle and high schools. The production will be comprised of that summer’s Conservatory Company members. This season’s production will be William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar directed by Raz Golden, running September 15 – October 10, 2025

The HVS2 new works series will feature William Shakespeare’s King Lear directed by Davis McCallum and featuring Kurt Rhoads, and The Minotaur by Luis Quintero.

Full details about HVS’s 2025 season, including casting, dates, and ticket information, will be announced at a later date.

This will be Hudson Valley Shakespeare’s final season using its pre-existing seasonal theater tent on the grounds of its new home in Garrison, NY. Construction began in September of a permanent open-air theater venue, The Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center, slated to open in 2026. HVS has engaged a team of experts including Jeanne Gang + Studio Gang, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, and Fisher Dachs Associates Theater Consultants to lead the design process of the performance space and surrounding campus. Now and into the future, HVS audiences will continue to experience the company’s signature open-air productions and pre-show picnicking on the grounds.

MORE ON THE 2025 SEASON:

William Shakespeare’s

The Comedy of Errors

Directed by Ryan Quinn

“I to the world am like a drop of water / That in the ocean seeks another drop.” 

One of Shakespeare’s most madcap comedies, the play follows two sets of identical twins, separated at birth, who unknowingly cross paths many years later. Their encounters spark a whirlwind of mayhem, leading to a series of escalating comic misadventures. With sharp wit, slapstick humor, and the special kind of heartache that comes from searching for your soulmate in a world turned upside down, The Comedy of Errors is a timeless celebration of human folly, in all its wondrous forms.

Thornton Wilder’s 

The Matchmaker

Directed by Davis McCallum

Featuring Kurt Rhoads & Nance Williamson

Music by Alex Bechtel

“I can’t imagine a world without love. Why, if you take away love, you take away the purpose for living!” 

Set between a sleepy Hudson River town and the bustling metropolis of 1880’s New York City, Thornton Wilder’s comic masterpiece explores love, adventure, and the pursuit of happiness, against the All-American backdrop of business and commerce. Filled with clever dialogue, rich characters, and lighthearted charm, The Matchmaker is a delightful exploration of the unpredictable nature of love, and the lengths people will go to find it. Don’t miss the play that inspired the musical Hello, Dolly! in a big boisterous production featuring HVS favorites Nance Williamson and Kurt Rhoads as Dolly Levi and Horace Vandergelder.

Octet

A Chamber Choir Musical

By Dave Malloy

Directed by Amanda Dehnert

Produced by special arrangement with Plate Spinner Productions

“If I go, will you go too? Will you follow me? Will you promise me?”

From the celebrated author of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 comes a hauntingly original new musical about the search for human connection in the digital age. Featuring rich harmonies and intricate vocal arrangements, Octet finds compelling human drama in our middle-of-the-night anxieties about the impact of technology on the nature of our relationships. Produced by special arrangement with Plate Spinner Productions, the HVS production is the first to follow the original Off-Broadway version, which won the 2020 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding New Musical.

HVS Cabaret

August 6 – 9, 2025

Work-In-Progress Solo Musical 

Book by Bryce Pinkham and Zack Fine

Music and Lyrics by Rona Siddiqui

Directed by Zack Fine

Dramaturgy/co-created by Kirya Traber

This project has been developed by Long Wharf Theatre (Jacob Padrón, Artistic Director, Kit Ingui, Managing Director) with additional support from Hudson Valley Shakespeare.

HVS Educational Production 

William Shakespeare’s

Julius Caesar

Directed by Raz Golden

September 15 – October 10, 2025

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.”

A timeless exploration of power, loyalty, and betrayal, Julius Caesar delves deep into the tensions between personal integrity and public duty. In Raz Golden’s swift and physical production, featuring a cast of seven brilliant young actors from the HVS Conservatory Company, Shakespeare’s political thriller is reimagined as a powerful meditation on the price of political ambition and the perils of idealism in a corrupt world.

THE MINOTAUR

BY LUIS QUINTERO

A TENTPOLE production by award winning writer Luis Quintero who brought us MEDEA: RE-VERSED in 2024.

ABOUT HUDSON VALLEY SHAKESPEARE

Located eighty minutes north of Manhattan, Hudson Valley Shakespeare (HVS) is a professional non-profit theater company that presents a rotating repertory season of lucid and highly inventive productions of both Shakespeare and more contemporary plays in an open-air theater overlooking the Hudson River. Founded in 1987 and formerly known as the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, HVS’s critically acclaimed body of work is forged from the most essential of elements – actors, audience, language, and landscape. The company’s spectacular 98-acre campus serves as a vibrant hub for the local community, a cultural and educational anchor for the region, and a national model for environmental sustainability in the performing arts. After 38 years of performing in a seasonal tent, in the summer of 2026 HVS will welcome audiences to its first-ever permanent home – the Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center, designed by the celebrated architecture firm Studio Gang. Protected from the elements but open to the landscape, the Scripps Theater Center will be the first purpose-built LEED Platinum theater in the United States.  

 

Rooted in the landscape of the Hudson Valley, with the plays of William Shakespeare as their touchstone, Hudson Valley Shakespeare engages the widest possible audience in a theatrical celebration of our shared humanity.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

WWW.HVSHAKESPEARE.ORG

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