The famous line from King Lear, which urges honesty and authenticity of expression, is fitting context for an upcoming performance at Earl Hall. On April 4, The King Lear Project — presented by Theater of War Productions, the Center for the Core Curriculum and the Undergraduate Community Initiative — will feature streamlined readings of scenes from Shakespeare’s tragedy, followed by a guided conversation with audience members about the responsibilities of leadership and the challenges of caring for loved ones and friends.
The specially curated performance will include acclaimed actors David Strathairn (Nomadland, Good Night, and Good Luck), Hope Davis (Asteroid City, Succession), Chad Coleman (The Wire, The Walking Dead) and Daphne Rubin-Vega (In the Heights, Only Murders in the Building), as well as members of UCI’s Practices in Community Building Fellowship cohort: Yahney-Marie Sangaré CC’28 and Kavya Prasad GS’26.
It will be Theater of War’s second recent appearance at Columbia; in February 2024, the company presented Hector, Andromache, and the Death of Astyanax, featuring readings from Homer’s The Iliad and Euripides’ The Trojan Women; the cast included Academy Award nominee Jeffrey Wright, Obie winner Elizabeth Marvel and a Greek chorus of Columbia students whose lives have been impacted by war.
Per Theater of War’s hallmark, Friday’s performance will be followed by a town hall-style discussion, inviting audience members to share their reactions and personal experiences. The conversation will be kicked off by a four-person panel of Columbia community members, including Stephen Buchman CC’59, Literature Humanities instructor Adrian Guo Silver SOA’14, GSAS’25 and Chanel Matsumoto CC’28.
“The students will have just finished reading King Lear in Lit Hum,” says Larry Jackson, director of the Core Curriculum. “Our hope is that this [performance] will provide a jumping-off point for them to engage in conversations about how we care for one another.”
Jackson notes that his own dissertation explored Stanley Cavell’s reading of Lear, which was published at the height of the Vietnam War, and finds the play very relevant to our current political moment. “I think we’ll get into all those conversations as part of this,” he says.
Register online for the April 4 performance of The King Lear Project. Admission is free.