You don’t need red-hot pokers: Hell is—other people. —Jean-Paul Sartre

Season Fourteen:
The Ties That Bind

The moments that have the most profound impact on our lives happen more often in the family kitchen than in the halls of power. Here at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, we wanted to explore these moments in a season we lovingly entitled "The Ties That Bind."

Five of the world's great playwrights reveal the joy, sorrow, frustration, and absurdity that are the essence of our daily and lifelong interactions with the people who are closest to us: our family. The first people we meet, the last people we know—they come in all shapes and sizes, full of passions and dysfunctions; but, at the end of the day, they are the building blocks of who we are and the bridges to who we will become.

This season, we hope you'll pull up a chair at our kitchen table and enjoy a few family stories: the young lovers who defy their feuding parents, the brave girl who escapes a wicked stepmother, the poet who struggles to leave his mother and sister for his own life, the aging father who cannot see the daughter who truly loves him. Featuring our growing ensemble of artists, these plays offer a chance to experience great truths in the most personal and intimate of settings.

—Brian Isaac Phillips, Artistic Director