It may be Shakespeare Under the Stars’ 20th season but Moraine Valley Community College’s 2024 summer production marks only the third time the same play has been staged twice. “King Lear” runs from July 18 to 21 outdoors at the school’s Gateway in Palos Hills. The July 20 staging includes a 6 to 7 p.
m. preshow performed by the Moraine Valley Orchestra and directed by Maryann Flock. “This is one of the few shows we’re repeating,” said Craig Rosen, who directed 2011’s “King Lear” and is directing the 2023-24 season finale show for Moraine Valley’s Academic Theater department.
“We repeated ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and we repeated ‘The Taming of the Shrew.’ Everything else we’ve done has been new work to us.” Rosen noted that Chicago residents Dan Scott, who retired in 2020 after several years as an adjunct professor of theater at Moraine Valley, and Pam Bagdzinski reprise their roles of the title character and Kent, respectively, in “King Lear.
” “To a lot of us, it’s the greatest of his plays, even including ‘Hamlet,’” said Rosen about playwright William Shakespeare. “Dan, one of our primary actors, is now really of age to play the role. We were able to do this play age appropriately instead of having 19-year-olds play 40-year-olds.
“If they hadn’t done a wonderful job the first time, we wouldn’t have put them in the same roles. It’s a very large cast. It’s nice to have this consistency in these two big roles.
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