2009

• Due to a family emergency, Much Ado About Nothing will now be directed by Kelley Costigan based on a concept by Polly Heinkel.  Jazz and flappers set the scene for this 1920s-esque production.
• Voting was held on 7th May and fiery debates ensued.  However, the worthy winner of the summer production is:   Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare.  It will be performed in early July in the garden - please check back to see confirmed dates & details.
• We're also hoping to get involved with the Shakespeare Birthday Procession and other scheduled events in Stratford to celebrate our local hero.
• A big thank you to all who attended Doctor Faustus recently and for your feedback - such lovely emails!  We're glad you enjoyed the production.
• Jonathon Macfarlane will be directing Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus in March 2009.  He recently appeared at The Priest in SIP's Twelfth Night.  The production will be very gothic in design.

2008

• Cait Fannin directed William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in December 2008. Cait is a talented and well known member of the SIP, having directed last year's hit The Taming of the Shrew.  She has appeared as the Wife of Bath in The Canterbury Tales and as Venus in last year's Sappho & Phao.  As well as appearing as a Reveller, she directed scenes from Othello and Richard III in Will-Full: Shakespeare's Scenes of Seduction & Persuasion.  She has appeared in ballet and theatre since the age of three and has directed in New York, Honolulu, Louisville, Miami and now Stratford-upon-Avon.  She is studying the performance of Shakespeare's Roman plays for her research degree at the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute.
• October 2008 - Lizz Ketterer stepped down after several years of good & faithful service as the SIP President.  New officers:  Sara Thompson (President), Emily Oliver (Secretary), Polly Heinkel (Treasurer).

 2007  

• Welcome to our new Board for 2007/2008:  Lizz Ketterer, President; Jay Glazer, Treasurer; Molly Zeigler, Secretary; and Cait Fannin, Director.  We bid a fond farewell to Brian Willis as outgoing Treasurer who will be playing Petruchio!  More news on the new Board as and when.
•  Henry V by William Shakespeare was performed in the beautiful gardens of the Shakespeare Institute 12 -13 & 19 - 21 July 2007 . It was directed by David W Hartwig and Lizz Ketterer. Unfortunately, the rains came and several performances had to be held indoors in the Lecture Hall.  The vagueries of English weather!
• Sappho & Phao by John Lyly was performed at Mason Croft, Church Street, Stratford-upon-Avon from 22 - 25 March 2007. Directed by Andy Kesson, it was the first staging of the play in about 400 years. This was staged as part of the John Lyly Incomplete Works Season.
• Music by Kirsty McGee and Mat Martin. Visit Kirsty's website! Their new EP was released on 5th March 2007 - Four Songs from Sappho & Phao.
• A Special Lyly Symposium was held on Saturday, 24 March at 1pm in the Lecture Hall, Mason Croft, Church Street. Speakers included Leah Scragg (University of Manchester), Carter Daniel (Rutgers Business School), Chloe Porter (Manchester University), Shelly Hsin-yi Hsieh (Shakespeare Institute) and Andy Kesson (Shakespeare Institute).
• John Lyly was the most influential writer working in the London theatre during the 1580s. His first two works, both prose narratives, were the best-selling literary works of the English Renaissance, and his subsequent eight plays, written to be performed before Elizabeth Tudor, provide a remarkably different aesthetic to the dramaturgy later established by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Kyd and co. (the dramaturgy now thought of as "Renaissance" or "Shakespearean").
• Sappho and Phao was Lyly's second play, and his first attempt to represent Elizabeth to herself with an onstage female monarch. Sappho is the chaste queen of Syracusa, and Venus and Cupid, in divine irritation at her imperviousness to love, make her fall for the local, and extremely dishy, ferry boy Phao. The play weighs up the various class, sexual, and political intrigues resulting from this situation. This will be the first staging of the play for over 400 years.
• The performance will last roughly one hour and a half, will be lit by the RSC, and include a new scoring of Lyly's song lyrics written by Kirsty McGee and performed live by Kirsty and Mat Martin ( www.kirstymcgee.com). Anyone who finds their interest in John Lyly reaching untold heights in the light of this production will be delighted to know that a symposium on Lyly is being held in conjunction with the play, on Saturday 24th March, from 1pm . Guest speakers include Carter Daniel, editor of The Plays of John Lyly , and Leah Scragg, author of a number of studies on Lyly including The Metamorphosis of 'Gallathea': A Study in Creative Adaptation , and editor of Sapho and Phao and Gallathea for the Malone Society, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England for the Revels Plays Companion Library, and, last year, The Woman in the Moon for the Revels Plays. This symposium will also serve as a pre- and post-show discussion.