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"Stratford Festival: King Lear"
Saturday, October 20, 2007
6am - 11:30pm
Festival Theater, Stratford, Ontario
Admission Fee (includes transportation, admission, and lunch. Remember to bring some spending money for dinner and the souvenir shop!):
$30 (for Undergraduate students)
$70 (for Graduate Students and Faculty and Staff)

This trip is now FULL.

The Culture Bus is going international! Join us for a daylong trip to Stratford, Ontario for a production of Shakespeare's King Lear. Prior to the play, we'll attend a costume warehouse tour and we'll also have plenty of time to explore downtown Stratford after the show.

For more info about the Stratford Festival: www.stratfordfestival.ca

IMPORTANT: As we will be traveling across the Canadian border, all U.S. citizens MUST bring a valid form of ID and birth certificate!!! Non-U.S. citizens are required to present a valid passport for entry into Canada. International students from some countries may also need a Canadian visa in order to enter Canada, and F-1 and J-1 students should make sure that they have the appropriate documents needed to re-enter the United States, including Form I-20 or DS-2019 with a valid travel signature. More information is here and here. International students with questions about leaving and re-entering the U.S. can email icenter@umich.edu. Click here for more details about border crossing requirements.

King Lear
One of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies (some say his best), the play was written sometime between early 1603 and early 1606 and first published in 1608 by Nathaniel Butter in a quarto known as Q1. This work is considered a "bad" quarto since it is full of errors, has little punctuation and is missing stage directions. The play was published in the First Folio of 1623 in a much better text with correction to the text and better stage directions.

Synopsis
As a prelude to dividing his kingdom among his three daughters, the aging King Lear demands that each declares how much she loves him. Goneril and Regan make eloquent but hypocritical speeches; when the third and youngest daughter, Cordelia, refuses to profess more than she feels, Lear disinherits her and banishes her. Meanwhile, the Earl of Gloucester is falsely persuaded by his bastard son, Edmund, that his other son, Edgar, is conspiring against him. It is only after these stubbornly misguided fathers have endured terrible physical and mental suffering that their eyes are opened to the fact that it is the offspring whom they have so bitterly renounced, not those to whose flattery they have succumbed, who truly love them.

For more info about Lear, click here.