From left: John Hutton, Carolyn Holding, Steve Maurice Jones and Michael Morgan are among those who are Boulder-bound for the summer of 2016.

The 2016 Colorado Shakespeare Festival will boast many names that are familiar to local theatre audiences, including many with ties to the DCPA.

A gender-bending The Comedy of Errors will reunite the primary lovers from the DCPA Theatre Company’s recent romantic comedy As You Like It: Carolyn Holding will play Antiphola of Syracuse, and Steve Maurice Jones will play Adriano. The director is DCPA Fight Director Geoffrey Kent, who currently is appearing in All the Way.
 
In As You Like It, Holding played Rosalind, who dressed as a boy while falling in love with Jones’ Orlando. Here, Kent takes the twist one step further by setting Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors in 1930s Paris, with women playing the primary male roles, and vice versa. So the Dromio twins are Dromias and the Antipholus twins are Antipholas.

The regional premiere of Equivocation will bring longtime DCPA Theatre Company actor John Hutton, last seen in Shadowlands, back to Colorado to play the titular role in Cymbeline, and star in the regional premiere of Bill Cain’s Equivocation. Like last year’s Wittenberg, Equivocation is a scholarly Bard variation with a fun fictional hypothesis: What if the British government commissioned Shakespeare to write the definitive history of a national crisis, the treasonous Gunpowder Plot, into one of his plays?

Shag, as Shakespeare is known in this play, will be played by Michael Morgan, who just starred in the Boulder Ensemble Theatre Company’s The Few and will soon join with Diana Dresser (All the Way) as guest artists for Buntport Theater’s upcoming new creation, 10 Myths on the Proper Application of Beauty Products (March 4-26).

Christopher Joel Onken, who just played a savage blue tribesman in the Lone Tree Arts Center’s comedy The Explorer’s Club, will star as Troilus in Troilus and Cressida.

Other familiar names in the 2016 CSF company include:

• Drew Horowitz (As You Like It), currently playing Jason in The Edge Theatre Company‘s Medea
• Mare Trevathan, who just played The Harbinger in LOCAL Theatre Company‘s world premiere, Faith
• Spencer Althoff, who just starred in the Avenue Theatre‘s Equus as Alan Strang
• Rodney Lizcano, most recently of the DCPA’s A Christmas Carol and star of the Arvada Center’s The Archbishop’s Ceiling
• Anne Penner, co-founder of the local Sis Tryst Productions

Returning company members also include Benaiah Anderson (DCPA’s Hamlet), Sean Scrutchins (Curious Theatre’s 9 Circles) and Sam Sandoe, who will be back for his 27th season this summer.

Complete cast lists follow. The 2016 season runs June 3-Aug. 7 in Boulder on the campus of the University of Colorado. Play descriptions are provided by the Colorado Shaakespeare Festival. Tickets are currently available by calling 303-492-8008 or going to www.coloradoshakes.org

Carolyn Holding and Steve Maurice Jones in the DCPA Theatre Company’s 2015 ‘As You Like It.’ Photo by Adams Visual Communications.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS:
From the director of CSF’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2013), The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s purest comedy — with a twist. Set in jazzy, sexy 1930s Paris, this new production bends the classic adventure of mistaken identities in a different direction that puts the women in charge … and the men in their places. Sultry singing, cabaret nightlife, puns and punchlines. In the Mary Rippon Amphitheatre.

Director: Geoffrey Kent
Spencer Althoff, Paramour
Naomi Ambroise, Luce
Benaiah Anderson, 2nd Merchant
Alicia Baker, The Parisian Minstrel
Kristofer Buxton, Ensemble
Kelsey Didion, Antiphola of Ephesus
Carolyn Holding, Antiphola of Syracuse
Steve Maurice Jones, Adriano
Emelie O’Hara, Dromia of Ephesus
Paige Olson, Balthasar
Christopher Joel Onken, Luciano
Sean Scrutchins, Doctor Pinch/1st Merchant
Zach Stoltz, Fat Neil
Howard Swain, Egeon
Mare Trevathan, Abbess
Jesse Wardak, Officer/Headsman
Coleman Zeigen, Duke Solinus

EQUIVOCATION:
Reluctant playwright and sleuth “Shag” — aka William Shakespeare — finds himself at the perilous crossroads between artistic integrity and survival when King James I commissions him to rewrite the history of England’s infamous Gunpowder Plot. Under the Orwellian gaze of a security state not far removed from today’s headlines, he must find a way to tell the truth without selling his soul. Indoors.

Director: Wendy Franz
Michael Morgan, Shag
John Hutton, Richard / Garnet
Rodney Lizcano, Cecil / Nate / Percy
Hunter Ringsmith, Sharpe / James / Wintour
Drew Horowitz, Armin / Catesby / Coke
Elisabeth Collins, Judith

TROILUS AND CRESSIDA

Director: Carolyn Howarth
Spencer Althoff, Patroclus
Naomi Ambroise, Ensemble
Benaiah Anderson, Diomedes
Kristofer Buxton, Ensemble
Kelsey Didion, Agamemnon
Lilli Hokama, Aeneas
Carolyn Holding, Cressida
Steve Maurice Jones, Hector
Geoffrey Kent, Achilles
Jihad Milhem, Paris
Emelie O’Hara, Cassandra
Paige Olson, Andromochae
Christopher Joel Onken, Troilus
Sam Sandoe, Nestor
Sean Scrutchins, Thersites
Zach Stoltz, Ensemble
Howard Swain, Pandarus
Mare Trevathan, Ulysses
Jesse Wardak, Ensemble

CYMBELINE:
Cymbeline is a vassal king of the mighty Roman Empire, but Britain herself remains a wild and untamed land in this mythic, idyllic romance. When the king banishes Posthumus—his beautiful daughter’s illicit, low-born husband—Imogen flees into a Welsh forest that still rings with Britain’s legendary past. By turns comic, heroic and harrowing, this tale of gods and villains, lovers and warriors, brings the entire CSF company together onstage. Indoors.

Director: Jim Helsinger
Spencer Althoff, 1st Lord
Naomi Ambroise, Ensemble
Benaiah Anderson, Guiderius / Servant 1
Kristofer Buxton, Ensemble
Elisabeth Collins, Ensemble
Kelsey Didion, Dr. Cornelius / Tribune 1 (1st Senator)
Carolyn Holding, Helen (Lady/Attendant)
Drew Horowitz Frenchman/Tribune 2
John Hutton, Cymbeline
Steve Maurice Jones, Posthumous
Geoffrey Kent, Iachimo
Rodney Lizcano, Pisanio
Michael Morgan, Caius Lucius
Emelie O’Hara, British Soldier/Musician
Paige Olson, Ensemble
Christopher Joel Onken, Arvigarus/Servant 2
Anne Penner, Queen
Hunter Ringsmith, Servant/Roman Soldier 1
Sam Sandoe, Sicilius Leonatus/Philario
Sean Scrutchins, Cloten
Zach Stoltz Ensemble, Jesse Wardak Ensemble

HENRY VI, PART 2:
(An Original Practices presentation)
TO COME.

Casting by Sylvia Gregory