About the Company

We founded Atlas Shakespeare Company in a spirit of exploration and discovery, with the mission of transporting our audiences to brave new worlds by presenting vivid, inclusive productions that present Shakespeare’s plays as they were intended to be experienced: fast-paced, character-driven, intensely relatable dramas that explore universal themes. We are delighted that you have joined us for our inaugural production!​​

Director's Note

The Henry VI plays constitute Shakespeare’s earliest surviving work—and, as such, they have all the missteps that you might expect from a first-time writer, including logistical impracticalities, tonal inconsistencies, and rambling narrative digressions! During the course of the adaptation process, I smoothed out these issues where possible...but to have “fixed” them altogether would have been to destroy much of what gives the plays their charmingly idiosyncratic nature, and to deny you the chance to understand Shakespeare’s trajectory as a writer. As a result, you are about to experience some of Shakespeare’s most biting comedy, most beautiful language, and most vibrant characters—alongside any number of moments that absolutely defy theatrical convention. Enjoy the ride!

— Adriana Alter

Producer's Note

Shakespeare was a product of his time, as are we all, and we cannot much expect him to have anachronistically accepted much of what we take for granted. Who in our day would not find less-than-palatable certain nuances of his portrayals of Jews or Moors? When we consider the young Shakespeare thus, not to mention as an ardent English patriot and a ready devourer of contemporary histories, it is hardly astonishing that he sees & portrays St. Joan of Arc as he does: the military prowess of this teenaged peasant-girl amazed her allies & enemies in her own time as, surely, the tale must amaze us now. In a sense, it is only natural to think of her as supernatural! When, in our play, Alençon calls Talbot a “fiend of Hell”, Reignier raises another possibility, i.e. that “the Heavens, sure, favor him”. Thus it stands with Joan, and to think of her as a saint was to think of her cause as the holy and the English as the evil one; this would, naturally, not do for the English playgoer of the late 16th century!

Joan was burned at the stake, condemned to die for heresy by the machinations of a corrupt ecclesiastical court loyal to English interests; her sentence was overturned by another ecclesiastical court during the lifetime of her parents, but Shakespeare and his countrymen would hardly have known this, nor, indeed, would it likely have affected popular opinion. The cause for her sainthood was not entertained until the 19th century; she was finally canonized by Pope Benedict XV in 1920.

We hope you enjoy our great poet in his full youthful vigor, injurious caricatures and all! (But may this producer also recommend Mark Twain’s wonderful Joan of Arc, a much fairer portrayal, available from Ignatius Press!)

— Alexander Nero