As mentioned during MountainTop tickets are $8 at the box office in advance with a student id and $15 at the door. You can watch the show for free if you usher reach out to me for details. By William Shakespeare Directed by J.Ariadne Calvano Considered Shakespeare’s first comedy, The Taming of the Shrew revolves around two sisters - one avoiding marriage (Katherine), and one longing for it (Bianca) - and the lengths to which suitors will go to win their “prize.” Our production is set in 1963, the year in which Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published. Friedan’s landmark critique of gender roles in American culture sparked what became known as second-wave feminism. When encountering Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew today, Katherine seems less “shrewish” than feminist. When she utters her first line about not wanting to be “sold” to a man, one of her sister’s suitors, Hortensio, retorts that “unless [Kate] were of gentler, milder mold,” she will not gain a husband. Setting the Elizabethan play in 1963 America allows us to question how the gendered behavior celebrated in mainstream American culture and society that was critiqued by Friedan 55 years ago relates to gender roles in 2018.