The Acting Company’s “Hamlet” at Hylton Center March 2

The Acting Company, an elite troupe of actors known for presenting both sides of a classic tale will be in Manassas on Sunday, March 2 to present Shakespeare’s Hamlet at 4 p.m. at the Hylton Performing Arts Center.

The previous night, Saturday, March 1, The Acting Company will perform the “other side” of the Hamlet story Tom Stoppard’s Tony Award-winning play, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts in Fairfax at 8 p.m.,

This humorous work follows Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the Danish prince’s childhood friends, who are pawns in the king’s plot against his nephew. Much of the action takes place “in the wings” of Shakespeare’s play, as the confused courtiers try to make sense of the dramatic events unfolding among the royal family and their own involvement in them. 

The Acting Company shows the opposite side of the story when it presents “Hamlet” at the Hylton on Sunday, March 2, 2014 at 4 p.m. For the first time in its 40-year history, the ensemble brings to life Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy, a riveting tale of vengeance, melancholy, rage, insanity, moral corruption and regicide, in which Hamlet seeks revenge for his father’s murder and his mother’s hasty remarriage to his uncle. Soon the young prince finds himself wavering between action and inaction, and sanity and madness, as he explores his own mortality and morality. Ian Belknap, The Acting Company’s artistic director, brings this great masterwork to life.

Rick Davis, the Hylton Center’s executive director and a professor in Mason’s School of Theater, will present a lecture titled “Holding Mirrors Up to Nature: Shakespeare, Stoppard and the World of ‘Hamlet’” on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014 at 1:30 p.m. at the Hylton Center.

This discussion examines a few of the contested aspects of Shakespeare’s play before exploring how a 20th century playwright with a gift for the absurd creates a parallel universe to “Hamlet,” illustrating the simple yet profound existential (and theatrical) truth that “every exit is an entrance somewhere else.”

This lecture is FREE and open to the public but requires an RSVP to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) with the subject line “Shakespeare Weekend.”

Founded in 1972 by the late John Houseman and Producing Director Margot Harley, The Acting Company is one of America’s leading touring repertory theaters. It has launched the careers of some of today’s finest actors of stage and screen, including Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone, Rainn Wilson, Jeffrey Wright, Frances Conroy and Jesse L. Martin. Throughout the years,

The Acting Company has performed more than 138 productions for more than three million people across the globe. Many of these performances are part of the company’s education program, which promotes theater and literacy in communities that lack live performance venues and theater arts education. The company has received numerous awards, including Obies, Audelcos, Los Angeles Critics Circle Awards and a Tony Award for Excellence in Theater.