“To Tell the Truth,” Actors’ Theatre’s 2016 season, features four plays that ask questions about how far relationships can be strained and even broken by dishonesty, falsehood and slander. Each of these classic stories is a way of looking at how our communities rely on honesty and trust. We all depend on one another in romance, friendship and daily living … but should we?

showblock-othelloOTHELLO

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Directed by Matt Hermes
May 26 – June 19, 2016

Thursdays through Sundays @ 8pm
Schiller Park (German Village), Amphitheatre Stage

When the formidable and revered war general Othello falls in love with the beautiful Desdemona he marries her, and welcomes the pleasures of a domestic life. Unknown to him, his trusted officer and friend, Iago, outraged for being passed over by Othello for a promotion, engineers an insidious campaign of lies and deceit to convince Othello that his new bride has been unfaithful to him. Othello becomes consumed with suspicions of Desdemona’s infidelity. Now he must wage war not only with an unseen enemy, but also his own tragic jealousy.

THE COUNTESS OF MONTE CRISTO

BY PHILIP J. HICKMAN AND JENNIFER FEATHER YOUNGBLOOD

from the novel Le Comte de Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Directed by Adam Simon and Jennifer Feather Youngblood

June 23 – July 17, 2016 (no performance July 1)

Thursdays through Sundays @ 8pm
Schiller Park (German Village), Amphitheatre Stage

Based on the classic swashbuckling tale of vengeance and redemption, The Countess of Monte Cristo tells the story of a young woman betrayed in the name of greed and spite by people she trusted who transforms herself into an agent of self-styled justice and returns to the glitter and intrigue of upper-class Paris twenty years later to carry out her revenge.

THE WINTER’S TALE

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Directed by Micah Logsdon
July 21 – August 7, 2016

Thursdays through Sundays @ 8pm
Schiller Park (German Village), Amphitheatre Stage

Appalachia and the Bard collide in a night of live music and theatre. Sometimes dark tragedy, sometimes uproarious comedy, The Winter’s Tale sets the story of one of Shakespeare’s more disparate and modern works, at the turn of the 19th & 20th century, between the coal mining country of Eastern Kentucky and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. Inspired in part by the album Jean Ritchie & Doc Watson at Folk City and heavily flavored with traditional mountain and American folk music performed by the cast, the play will celebrate the culture and the music of Appalachia, a region with strong cultural, musical and linguistic ties to Shakespeare’s England, with a tragedy and joy that is uniquely and entertainingly American.

AN IDEAL HUSBAND

BY OSCAR WILDE

Directed by Philip J. Hickman
August 11 – September 4, 2016

Thursdays through Sundays @ 8pm
Schiller Park (German Village), Amphitheatre Stage

A distinguished politician’s youthful indiscretions come to light in An Ideal Husband, Oscar Wilde’s sophisticated satire. Sir Robert Chiltern’s political career and marriage are put to the test as the true nature of his virtue is revealed. His problem is compounded by his wife’s intolerance of the slightest character flaw. Wilde’s classic comedy features two of his best characters, the deliciously sly Mrs. Cheveley and the wonderfully witty Lord Goring.