Bard in the Barracks is celebrating our twentieth year of staging powerful, thrilling, and immersive outdoor Shakespeare productions in Fredericton by staging two plays this summer, one for the first time and one not seen on our stage since 2012.

Taking the stage for its inaugural Bard production will be the tragicomic romance The Winter’s Tale, a moving story of jealousy, betrayal, and reconciliation. When Leontes, the king of Sicilia, impulsively accuses Queen Hermione of committing adultery with the Bohemian king, Polixenes, he shocks those closest to him. Loyal friends and family are cast aside, and a newborn’s life hangs in the balance. A unique blend of courtly tragedy, country comedy, love story, and theatrical magic, The Winter’s Tale features lively characters (including the roguish pickpocket Autolycus), Shakespeare’s most notorious stage direction (“Exit pursued by a bear”), and his most surprising ending. The play, one of Shakespeare’s last and a perennial audience favourite, will be directed by John Ball and staged under a big tree in an intimate, stationary thrust-stage format in a downtown Fredericton park.

The Winter’s Tale will be joined on stage by Love’s Labour’s Lost. In this witty and farcical romantic comedy, the King of Navarre and three of his closest male followers vow to dedicate themselves to a strict course of study and celibacy just before four comely young women from France arrive at the kingdom for a prolonged ambassadorial visit. The not-altogether-unpredictable comedy that follows is rounded out by subplots featuring an egotistical lovelorn Spaniard and a pedantic schoolmaster who decides to direct a woeful gaggle of thespians in a play that rivals that performed by the Rude Mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream for sheer comic awfulness. Last performed by Bard in the Barracks in 2012, Love’s Labour’s Lost will be directed by Len Falkenstein and Jake Martin.

Keep watching this space for more information about the plays and auditions (scheduled for April 28-29), with our detailed performance schedule and ticket information on the way later in May.