Following this Spring’s Serious About Comedy event, we are continuing our relationship with the University of Birmingham with a new play, brought to you by the Shakespeare Institute. 

The Queen of Sicily is dead… or is she? After friend and servant Paulina helps Queen Hermione fake her own death, Hermione has narrowly escaped the wrath of her husband, King Leontes, but has she truly found her freedom? With nowhere to go and the constant danger of discovery looming, a forgotten greenhouse becomes her only refuge. In the wake of her son’s death and newborn daughter’s disappearance, trapped in isolation with her grief, freedom looks less like a dream come true as each day passes. Set during the sixteen-year span of Hermione’s absence from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, A Winter’s Tale: A New Play delves into the mystery of the missing queen and asks us to consider: when all we have left are painful memories and distant daydreams—when the walls protecting us feel more like a prison than a sanctuary—how do we feel alive again?