Barnes & Noble Bookfair Saturday to Benefit Illinois Shakespeare Festival

Date: 7/24/06
Contact: Marc Lebovitz

Not only will Barnes & Noble Booksellers customers this Friday, Saturday and Sunday be helping support the Illinois Shakespeare Festival with their purchases, they will also (on Saturday) be able to watch this year's popular Green Show mini-plays back to back to back.

Festival supporters can print out a bookfair voucher from the Festival web site at www.thefestival.org and bring it with them before making their Barnes & Noble purchases this weekend. The booksellers will donate 15 to 25 percent of purchases to the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, which next summer will celebrate its 30th anniversary.

According to Sarah Jenkins, associate managing director of this year's festival, additional events and activities were added to this year's bookfair to offer more for Barnes & Noble customers. Saturday's activities begin at 10 a.m. with Coffee with the Director, featuring Deb Alley. School of Theatre Associate Professor Alley, who directed this summer's festival production of "Julius Caesar" and who is interim artistic director of the festival, will discuss the play and the artistic process while participants enjoy free coffee.

At 11:30 a.m., "The Comedy of Errors" Green Show will be presented. Based on the comedy of the Smothers Brothers, the mini-play captures the light comic spirit of this Shakespearean play in true Green Show fashion. At noon, the actors will present the "Pericles" Green Show mini-play, where the Super Mario Brothers meet Shakespeare in a madcap parody in which an Italian man risks it all to save the Princess. At 12:30 p.m., the "Julius Caesar" Green Show offering will be presented. Titled "Julius Caesar's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day," the mini-show parody brings together togas, pina coladas and Michael Jackson's "Thriller."

Saturday's activities will conclude with a 1:30 p.m. program, "Mid-summer's Magic for Kids." The younger children will particularly enjoy learning about Shakespeare, his fancy language and his stories with the help of this summer's ISF players.

At 1 p.m. Sunday, actors from the festival will present "Pirates!" Youngsters of all ages are invited to wear their best pirate gear and prepare for swashbuckling stories and tasty snacks. Kids can have their pictures taken with a pirate and can hunt for buried treasure at Barnes & Noble.